Bow Drill Monthly: January Sycamore
Jamie Dakota
The first of a monthly series we’re creating here at Howl: A Bow drill set from scratch in the wild. Crafting a set, and taking ember to flame with tinder available on the day.
Today's effort I thought I'd ease into it with Sycamore (Acer Pseudoplatanus), a firm favourite of mine to introduce the technique to beginners. It can often be found in the right condition for the bow drill method, although it quickly goes too far and becomes crumbly.
Today’s weather was clear and sunny, temperatures around 4-8C. It had rained and snowed heavily for the previous two days. I walked into the woods at 11am, knowing I wanted to create a bow drill fire I started looking for materials as soon as I got off the main paths.
The tinder bundle was the first thing to gather, as it had been wet I wanted to maximise the opportunity to gather just the driest stuff and be able to dry if further while I gathered everything else.
A mix of tussock grass and cleavers, which I'd collected from the eastern slope of a hill so it would have had the sun drying it all morning from last nights rain. I attached the grass to my pack to keep it in the breeze and you can see later I have it hung from a tree in the breeze while I make the set, further drying it.
I found an area of sycamores in a small woodland stream valley, protected somewhat from today’s gusts and winds. I located a potential dead bough which had fallen from a stool of a dozen arm-thick stems, the dead one was rested at 45 degrees. So the underside was more rotten than the top due to retaining moisture, but the soft rot seemed only superficial so I started work. I didn’t go far to do this incase I needed to swap to another stem.
Initially I carved both pieces from the same dead standing bough, but the thinner end that I'd used to carve the spindle was too far gone and crumbled during the first test drilling. I typically get my sets to about 80% finished, enough to give them a try and see whether it’s working, before finishing them with the critical final 20%.
As the spindle was crumbling, I knocked up a second one from a different sycamore section and got to work testing the set. Black smoke almost immediately and a nice consistent action this time. So I finish everything off and get the ember on the first run.
Once I'd collected everything, it took 45 minutes to carve the set and get the ember (given that I ended up carving two spindles).
Thanks for reading, our next instalment should feature myself and Max, due mid Feb.
If you’d like to learn this technique yourself, check out our wildfire course below.
In this detailed bushcraft course I’ll give you all the tuition you need to be successful in making wildfire from natural materials. This one day course is a detailed experience of hands on work enabling you to make fire from scratch this way in the wild.