HOW TO START A FIRE WITH A BOW DRILL
It’s the eleventh century, and back at Straumfjörðr — the Norse community in northwestern Newfoundland that will someday be known as L’Anse aux Meadows — the villagers are preparing for winter. Your assignment: Head inland and return with meat. Although there’s not as much big game as back in Scandinavia, you should be able to catch some beaver, red fox, or Arctic hare. On occasion, you might come across the tracks of black bears or wolves. There are vast herds of caribou across the water in Markland, in what will eventually be called Labrador. But the moose that will be so prevalent on this island in the future will not be introduced until the 1870s. As night begins to fall, you prepare to make camp. Alas! You’ve forgotten your flint back at Straumfjörðr. Looks like you’ll need to start your fire the old-fashioned way. With a sigh, you set to work building a bow drill.
1. Find two sticks — one straight and dry, about fifteen centimetres long, and the other slightly curved, roughly sixty centimetres in length. You’ll also need two short, flat pieces of wood — one bone-dry, to be placed on the ground, and the other slightly damp, to be used to apply downward pressure while operating your bow drill. If you can’t find flat pieces of wood, you can always use your axe to split some off a log. Willow, balsam fir, aspen, or spruce are the preferred species.
2. Collect dry dead plant matter such as leaves or grasses for a tinder bundle.
3. Cut a small notch in your dry, flat board and then remove a small wedge from your notch. It should be no more than one eighth of the circumference of the notch. Place the board on the ground. Make a small notch in the other board as well. 4. Tie a length of string to each end of the curved stick, leaving a bit of slack. Loop the string once around the straight stick, or “spindle.”
5. Hold the dry board in place with your foot and insert the bottom end of your spindle into the notch. Take the second notched board and place it on top of the spindle as a cap.
6. Grasping the curved bow in your dominant hand, make a sawing motion, turning the spindle in the notch while pushing down with your opposite hand.
7. Saw the bow drill for an unbearably long time. Keep going. No, seriously — just keep going forever. Eventually, a small pile of hot wood dust should begin to accumulate. This is your “coal.”
8. With a knife, transfer the coal to your tinder and blow gently until flames ignite.
9. Remember not to forget your flint ever again!