Friction Fire Surprises

Last week my friend Dave was in town for a wedding. While he was here I thought it might be fun to teach him how to make a bowdrill fire. I didn't particularly expect him to get a coal, though I knew it was a real possibility, I just hoped for him to begin to get a handle on the process and maybe get excited when he realized how easy it was to get things smoking. He surprised me though. He got the form down quite quickly and with only a couple of tries managed to get a coal. Using some spare tinder I had he  blew the coal into flame. Twice. The first time it flamed up into his face which incited him to drop the bundle, causing it to go out. Being a little more careful to avoid getting singed, he was able to coax it back into flames.

After that I thought I would demonstrate the handdrill. My hands were a bit tender and my consistency is still quite bad, so I didn't expect to get a coal. But I thought it might be interesting to show him how it goes - get some good smoke and char. So I was drilling away when, lo and behold, I had a coal. The coal had fallen off my collection board and I didn't have a tinder bundle left so I just piled on some of the dead conifer needles that were on the ground as well as a piece or two of dead grass and was a little surprised when, after sufficient coaxing, it burst into flame.

I had another surprise last Monday. I have some mullein stalks I collected on my way back from Idaho last August. They are what I mostly practiced handdrill with in the beginning (now I've mostly been using big leaf maple), but I never managed to get any coals with them. But on Monday there was a group of us practicing fire and I hauled out my favorite mullein stalk to show people. Roy suggested that he and I take turns with it and I agreed. My expectations were low given my previous lack of success with mullein and my difficulty with taking turns (I'd tried it only a couple of times before with a shortish big leaf maple spindle and felt that we would have been more likely to get a coal doing it individually, though practice might change that). The mullein's length (probably around 3 feet) made partnering more efficient than with a shorter stalk, and it only took us about 3 passes down the stalk each before a coal popped out. The next night we repeated the experiment with equal facility.