by Woodsbum

Ok… I have a confession to make that many of you already figured out. I am kinda lazy about certain things. Well, many things. To come to my own defense, however, I do try and work smarter and not harder. This being the case, I decided that I was too lazy to actually pull up long term memory or use trial and error to find the materials to build a bow drill set. In the past I would get a wild hair up my hind quarters and decide to go get some cedar and poplar to play around with just to show off. Since it has been a while I somehow fogot the “fingernail test” (knowing the right hard/soft wood combo) that I used to use to find the perfect drill/hearth combo. This made me decide to go purchase an actual bow drill set online so I had a working set to reestablish a working “fingernail test” for future field expedient bow drill sets.

WELL, it came in the mail today so I had to test it out……..

Here is the picture of the kit:

The kit from Primitive Fire comes with:

• 1 Hardwood bow
• 2 Cottonwood hearth/fire boards
• 3 Cottonwood spindles/drills
• 1 Ceramic palm rock
• 1 Quart size bag of shredded jute twine
• 12′ Jute
• 1 Leather coal catcher
• Instructions

Of course I had to play around a bit so I ran downstairs to the parking garage and got my implements of destruction ready.

Because I did remember the techniques and tricks showed to me as a kid, I did as I was originally taught. I drilled until I got some black powder produced and then dropped that back on top of the hearth.

Once that is put back onto the hearth and you drill some more, it doesn’t take long to get smoke/embers. This was about 10 seconds of drilling to get this result. I am not kidding about the 10 seconds, either.
As you can see, the embers can be shaken onto the leather piece for easier moving over to the jute bundle/tinder you want to ignite. This also keeps you from burning your hands as much. In the picture below there are two big chunks of burning dust. They are in the center of the picture and the large chunk on the right side of the picture, towards the back of the pile. I drilled much longer than I needed to and got a lot more embers than needed. This was intentional so that I could get a good picture.
Here is me poking the pile with my finger in an attempt to get you a good picture. For the record, I did burn the tip of my finger to get this picture.
Here are my final thoughts on this:

• The “palm rock” is awesome and I would have purchased this regardless
• The kit works very well and is easy to use
• As a kit to learn with, it is quite good
• If you can remember the hardness/softness of the wood you need to make a bow drill set work, you don’t need the whole kit….. Maybe just the “palm rock.”
• Extra, stripped jute is always a good thing….  Especially if you didn’t have to strip it.

I hope this helps you guys and you learned something. I have yet to pull out their instructions and look at them, but the whole idea is pretty straight forward. If you get one, I really doubt that you will be unhappy. Again, the “palm rock” really is nice……

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