While visiting New York’s Berkshire Mountains region last winter I happened upon a crew of girls who knew how to whip up a bow drill to make fire without a match. A bow drill has 4 parts: the bow, the spindle, the fireboard, and the handhold. This is what they taught me.
Steps
Step #1: Choose and whittle your wood.
Next
- For your fireboard, find or whittle a flat board as thick as your thumb and bigger than 3" wide and 3" long.
- For your spindle, choose a straight-grained branch that’s a thumb knuckle in diameter and 8" in length. Whittle into a dowel shape, removing the bark, with a semi-sharp point at each end.
- For your handhold, find a 5"-long piece of wood (slightly narrower in width), semi-flat on one side. To make the handhold notch, whittle a 1/2"-deep hole sloping at 45° to its center.
Conclusion
This project first appeared in MAKE Volume 21.
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