Chapter 9 Making Fire - from my book Changes

A smoking coal in the notch in my fireboard. This coal is ready to be put into a tinder bundle and blown into flame.

Chapter 9

Making Fire

At The Standard class we learned about tracking (Tom’s favorite skill); knives; snares; dead fall traps; how to skin, gut, and and prepare an animal for eating; how to tan the animal’s hide with it’s brains; how to make a debris hut survival shelter; how to purify water; some plant identification; the four easiest to find survival foods anywhere in the world (cat tails, grass, cedar inner bark, and acorns); and how to make fire with friction.

Making fire with friction was the one thing I was really determined to learn how to do before going home.  I felt that if I could learn that one skill, the money I spent on travel, and the week long class, would have been worth it.

We were given short pieces of cedar fence posts that the class as a group chopped up into “blanks” to carve our bow drill fire making kits out of. Using only non folding sheath knives (the only kind allowed), we each carved a spindle, a hand held piece, and a fireboard.  We were shown exactly how to carve our bow drill kits, as they were called.

There was a bucket of roughly made primitive bows to use once we had our pieces carved.

We were shown where and how to collect a tinder bundle to put our baby coal in. We would need that once we got a coal using our bow drill kit.

We were shown the correct best form for working the bow drill to make fire.  Occasionally, during the week we were given time to work on this process of carving, and working the bow drill to get a coal and blow it into flame within a tinder bundle.

I struggled with trying to make fire all week and worried I would not get a coal or a flame before the class was over.

Tom said that making fire was the great equalizer.  You could have a strong military special ops man on one side, and an old grandmother on the other side, and it was a toss up which one would make fire first.  Making fire is not about strength, there’s more to it.

There are techniques that must be observed. And Tom taught us there is a spiritual side to making fire. We were told that to pray for success in making fire.  We were told that fire is a living thing, and to bring fire into existence through the ancient ways is to know fire.  Fire will be yours.

The bow string wraps around the spindle, and by pulling and pushing the bow, the spindle would spin between the fire board and the hand held piece of wood, one direction, then the other, over and over.

Making a coal was compared to a man and a woman making a child.  The man, the spindle, aggressive and active.  The woman, the fireboard (or hearth as it is sometimes called), receptive, cradling, nurturing.

Each piece of the bow drill kit must be carves in such a way that the spindle, pointed on each end, burns it’s way into the fireboard on the bottom and the handheld piece on the top.  Then a notch has to be carved into the circle that has been burned into the fireboard by the spindle, so the wood dust has a place to gather during the working of the bow.  That dust is what eventually becomes a coal when it reaches 800 degrees.

Before that happens, though, the hand held, which has also been burned in, must have some lubrication put between the spindle and the handheld piece so it does not continue burning, but instead allows the spindle to move with very little friction.  That lets all the friction happen between the fireboard and the spindle, and heats up the notch where the coal is being formed.

Once a coal was made, that baby coal had to be placed gently into a tinder bundle and blown into flame.  The smaller, more delicate the tinder, the easier it is for the coal to become flame.

Each person who got a flame was applauded by the entire group of students and instructors at about 65 people strong.

I worked diligently on my bow drill kit and towards getting a coal.  It wasn’t easy, and the short or long breaks set aside for practice didn’t seem long enough.  I struggled and would get winded working that bow back and forth.  My muscles would get tired and start shaking.  By Friday I worked into the night at the Taj, still unable to get a coal.

Finally, one of the instructors at that time, Eddie Starnater (now of Practical Primitive), came over to see if he could help.

He said I had burnished the fireboard, which means the burnt in circle with the notch in it had become shiny and smooth.  He put his cigarette in his mouth, put a bit of sand in the burnished area, and took over for a minute, roughing up the circle where the notch was so I could get some friction.

Then he coached me as I worked the bow, telling me to keep the spindle straight and either push harder or less hard on the hand held so I could get the spindle going well and easily.  Finally, I got my coal and blew it into flame!

I was tired but went to bed happy, having succeeded in making fire using friction; something I had previously thought was just a myth.