Frustrated and Given Up on Bow Drill??? Try a 2x4 and Cheat Bearing Block

I'm David with the david west channel well today i want to show you how you should start learning bow drill but if you're first starting out there's no need to try to make it all natural you need to try to get the hang of it see how you want to cut out your spindle in your fire boarding just get familiar with the tools and the materials and the technique and also there's a balance to it getting down in the stance when you're ready to go ahead and and crank down on that on the drill there's a certain balance and a technique you'll be a lot better off you won't get discouraged as easily if you make your first bow drill success with a with a two-by-four and use a cheap bearing block i've got a video that shows you how you can make this bearing block this is a bearing that I bought at Ace Hardware for $5.00 here's a fat weight bearing block or you can just take the end of the spindle and the end and the divot in the bearing block and just spray and saturate it with wd-40 so you want to use a cheap bearing block don't worry about using natural cordage paracord to be just fine you just want to get the hang you just want to get a success on your belt it doesn't matter how much you have to cheat to do it let's just get it random piece off a wood pile here for about now this is thicker than I normally use but I'm not going to spend a lot of time I mean you spent a lot of time finding just the perfect branch for a bow but for our instructional purposes today let's go ahead and use this now people tell you to use one that's from arm armpit to fingertip this was gonna be a little short let's cut this one off right here and we'll tie the string right around this knot right here and you can just use a slipknot slip now to hold it just fine let me point you down to the table a little bit more than ma'am over this way so it's a slipknot we'll just put it over here and tighten it very well and I want it I'm gonna drill the through hole right here and this is the way I like to tie a bow string on a little bow you you choose whatever method you want a will right through here yeah this little bit of slack right here is probably gonna be enough for what we end up making and then you wrap this around here tight as you can wrap it and then I just put a half hitch in it right here I make a loop over my thumb just so I can have enough space to stick this in here and cinch it down and just the roughness of this paracord it'll stay tight it'll cinch down to stay tight and that's all we're gonna need for a bow and a bowstring that should work nicely alright let's go ahead now I've already examined this 2x4 which side you want to split I want to split off something for the spindle now and I initially thought that I were to go ahead and avoid that knot right there but when I got to look under the grain on this side you see how it dives over to the left so even if I started like 3/4 of an inch in and tried to make a split down here you see it would all run over to the left so therefore since this grain right here is straighter on both sides I'm just gonna have to try to because this knot isn't all the way through I'm gonna have to try to split off of this side so we're going for a spindle that's 3/4 of an inch so let me go ahead and split it at about an inch to make sure you can see over here splitting pretty bad on that side let's see let's see what we can do if we can come in on this side and this one's doing the same thing so when you make yours out of a 2x4 you'll be looking for a fir 2x4 from the building supply and hopefully yours will split better than mine was starting to split there and there so let's go ahead and cut it it about 1 inch and while we're cutting let's go ahead and make that about a half inch half inch fire board spindling fireboard do your best to whittle it down to four square sides and then start rounding from there and you may have to deal with some diving grain as you continue to whittle it on down there's gonna be some diving grain that takes you places you don't want to go but you know you can turn it over if it's not cutting just right just take your time with it and make a nice true round spindle I'm gonna put three levels of facets all the way around here I'll start about a quarter inch down come all the way around with facets then come up at eighth inch all the way around with facets and then that last little sixteenth and that's what makes the perfect shape on your spindle if you're missing something from this video I have plenty of how to bow-drill videos you might want to check those out too and then just look at it see if it's symmetrical see what you need to touch up that looks pretty good right there so you hear a lot of people talking about making a spindle as long as from your pinky to your thumb which is eight inches I prefer a 12 inch spindle this one is 10 inches but it started off at about 14 and I'm glad that I had that 14 because here's some of that crack right there I cut some of that off and then there was some diving grain right here I don't know if he could see the left over on the very end so I cut that off and I ended up with 10 inches and I'm really pleased with that so let's go ahead and do the power board now let's go ahead and put a divot right here now people always trying to give you some kind of formula for where you should put it you know if it helps you this this would be about half way here and come back about another eighth inch you'll find what works best for you so pretty much in the middle of this this piece here alright now let's go out do go ahead and do a real good burn in you always want to anchor your wrist into your skin I tell people that and I still see them out here your wrist needs to be in your shin that's why the placement of this board is very important the placements board should be Emma smaller your foot now the and that can be adjusted over this body is different and everybody styled is different and but for me right in the smaller foot you want to anchor to the shin I'm pretty much plumb slow and easy take your time there's no hurry people always ask me how much you bearing down well for me I don't really bear down I'm pretty much just holding my balance here and for me balance was a big issue when I first heard of bode billing to be in this position and to make sure that I could operate the bow properly and then I could you know I had my stance was right and my spindle was plumb there was an issue with my balance it took a while before I think I never hear everybody talking about balance in their stance but it was an issue for me so be aware it might be a problem especially now that you know I'm on this hill is pretty steep hill so that affects the ones - all right so now the spin that should be made into that fire board and I'm gonna go back over to the table now and cut my notch now I think that needs to be round or hold on this needs to be rounder than that so let me just find Kenda I'll make it a little bit smaller make it a little bit rounder and you'll learn when when to tweak the tip of your spindle and what not to and take your time with this there's no rush now that's actually point your than I would have liked but I think it's gonna work so let me go cut my notch now you can save this dust and reuse it let me get set up on the table I'll show you me cutting the notch that you can make a square point notch or you can make a flat point notch and you don't want to go all the way to the very center you can stop just shy of the center but if you accidentally go to the center it's okay and I usually visualize where the edge of the hole is and that's how I figure where I want to start my not yet a lot of people use a knife to notch this out this saw [Laughter] and that should work nicely right there some people like to take and cut that corner off right there they feel like air can get up underneath the Ember better sometimes I do that most of the time I don't cut a I don't chamfer those corners most of the time we're gonna use pine needles just take you loblolly pine needles and welcome up process them till they get good and soft let's see what we can do make sure the string is still good tight and it is I'm going to stick it up the way I put them in here as I stick it up between the string like that and just wrap it around to the front so that the spindle is only outside of the string not in here let's see what a pond 2x4 can do for snow sometimes you can do this like 40 strokes and get away with then other times I have to do like a hundred strokes I call the one stroke or forward anyway throwing it the first thing that's going to happen and there's no need to go crazy on this is just take your time and gently fill that notch up of dust then when you feel like the notch is full you can increase speed and it said go ahead and ignite the best you got plenty of time once the amber forms because it actually helps it to just let it sit there and get hotter and hotter and coalesce when Amber's first made its its Lila just come up to go all to pieces but as it sits there and gets hot it sort of melds together if you don't sweat into it like I almost did let's see if we can get it to go and then a lot of times I like waving it waiting you know make it go to flames easier than blowing on it sometimes so I don't like how that tip war but I'm just gonna keep it like that you need to do I guess we'll just keep it yeah I'm having to bear down on the side of my string with my thumb to tighten it up you know I could tighten it up right here take up a half inch of slack but I'll just use my thumb on this one [Laughter] whole lot easier with a 2x4 with a fresh 2x4 and I like waving so I want to get to Ambur started by blowing on and then wave it the rest of the way there we go all right so it turned out pretty good I'm sure I forgot to tell you a bunch of stuff oh I hate the way the internet spender looks before I make another divot which is time for another dinner I definitely put a around a nice round point on that like we started with before but uh we're pretty good didn't it all right Joe I appreciate you joining me on this one wheel catch you on the next one

Channel: David West

Views: 14,909

Rating: 4.8185744 out of 5

Keywords: bow drill, bow drill friction fire, friction fire, how to bow drill, how to make a bow dril, how to make a bow drill set, making fire, tinder, pine needles, hobo stove, how to make a bow drill bow, how to make a bearing block, how to make a frictionless bearing block, how to make a friction free bearing block

Id: dmoWo1U7gdA

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 31 2018