Daily ember challenge

As an apprentice bushcraft instructor, we are asked to help run courses and start to teach skills. One of the key elements covered on a wide range of our courses is fire lighting, particularly the bow drill friction fire method, which can be a highlight of the course for many. It is important that we are able to light a fire with the bow drill effectively, under the watchful eye of the audience who eagerly wait to see the flames produced. This could be daunting for instructors with less experience but as Woodland Ways run courses all year round, in any weather, it’s also import to be able to do achieve the end result in adverse conditions.

So, in order to improve my bow drill skills I went through a personal challenge to deepen my learning and skills by lighting an ember every day during December.

What does it mean to ‘master’ the bow drill? To be honest I don’t think anyone could claim to be a ‘true master’ of friction fire as this would surely mean lighting a fire, in every possible weather, using every possible wood combination, in every season, in every part of the world – and that would probably take more than one lifetime to master. However, that does not mean we can’t try to be the best we can.

In my mind, there are several levels to ‘mastering’ the bow drill.

The first would be to be go on a course or workshop, with access to a pre-prepared set and hands-on tuition instruction on effective bow drill technique. Learning the bow drill could take lots of trial and error, if you are trying to teach yourself. On the other hand, if you come on a course and have experienced instructors demonstrate and guide you how to do it, such as tweaking your position, this will drastically speed up the learning process. If you are practicing at home, you might have picked up a wood that might be too hard or too soft or too rotten and prove difficult to produce an ember – even with good technique, it could take a lot of effort or be unmanageable.

Much of the skill is in the technique, if you don’t take the time to practice, you may struggle or at least use more energy than necessary. You can get someone to show you and give guidance on how to bow effectively. This is a great starting block and basic level of understanding. You will know the mechanics and the technique, but not necessarily have much understanding around the problem solving required to consistently succeed.

The second level would be to take that knowledge and go and make your own set from scratch and find the materials. Perhaps leaving it to dry indoors. Then later produce an ember and blow it into flames without supervision.

The next step would be to find the materials on the spot, make fire without letting the set dry. Making a new set each time to build up the repetition.

After that it would be to include natural cordage. So, if you don’t have any paracord try a range of different materials, such such as nettles, for the cord instead.

The next step would be to try and light the fire in adverse conditions. So maybe very, very damp, raining, very cold or snowing to name just a few.

And the final level would be to travel around and use lots of different materials, species that perhaps you weren’t familiar with. Trying it on different continents with natural cordage as well in any weather conditions.

Winter in the UK can be cold but is usually very wet. This is a good time to try a challenge of improving friction fire lighting, as damp and cold are the enemy of friction fire. As I write this blog I am halfway through this challenge – with the idea of train hard, fight easy. If I can do it when it’s cold and wet, then when it’s dry and warm it will be easy.

I am doing a combination of using the same set to make an ember and blow into flames for daily practice, as well as combinations of different challenges to mix things up.

So with a cold few days at the beginning of December I took advantage of lighting a fire with the bow drill in the frost.

Then we had a little bit of snow so I got out and bow drilled in the snow.

Then we had a few days of rain which gave me chance to bow drill in the rain, fighting to keep the ember alive under my coat.

Since then, I’ve also tried to make sets from different woods I have found. I’ve used some Willow, Sycamore, and Hazel on Pine always finding wood and making sets from scratch. For the second half of the month, I plan to try many other types of wood in various conditions.

I have been using some natural cordage, including a 3 ply raffia, which was very strong, but I plan to make some more out of nettles and brambles and maybe Willow and Lime bark.

Other things I have experimented with are seeing how slowly I can bow and still produce an ember, or how quickly I can produce flames. And seeing how quickly I can take a stick and turn it into a bow drill set and produce an ember.

For those of you who know how to bow drill get out there and test your skill and push yourselves, do things the hard way so that they will be easier next time. Push the limits so you know what works and what doesn’t. And then from there, you can take the knowledge to the next level, and then go out and dive into this wonderful world of friction fire with endless possibilities of variation. For those that would love to learn how to light a fire by rubbing sticks, but think you can’t because you don’t know how, book yourselves on one of our many great courses, I might see you in the woods some time if you do.