Hand Drill Friction Fire - From Agony to Ember (A Beginners Perspective)

This is my full journey in the process of producing an ember from the hand drill. Big thanks for boggycreekbeast who gave me a lot of personal tips and advice and even produced a custom video to help. It wasn t long after that I was able to achieve success: https://www.youtube.com/user/boggycreekbeast I have included 24 attempts. I omitted a few false attempts (perhaps another 3 or so) that I abandoned due to various issues such as hands that were too sore to continue or not being able to even get a small amount of smoke. I hope this video serves other beginnings and showcase just how difficult this process really is and how much effort is truly required in order to be successful with this method. While it is nice to see other people succeed, they do not show the trial and error process and often make it look far too easy. Some things I learned: 1. Choose ideal materials (soft dry wood - poplar works well and I didn t get cedar to work, but it should, mullein in good condition that is not too brittle). Material that is questionable probably won t work. 2. Use lots of down pressure. Put your set up on a bath scale and push down until you get 10-20 lbs of down force. You need a lot of pressure. 3. If you aren t getting smoke within 20-40 seconds, you aren t doing it right. 4. Use honey or pine sap to get enough grip so you can apply a lot of pressure. 5. Build up slowly and don t wreck your hands. Try 2-3 attempts per day and watch for blisters. If you get sufficient hot spots on your hands, stop for the day and try again later. You are unlikely to get an ember on your first try and if you go too long, you ll set yourself back. It takes a long time to build up calluses in the right places. 6. Lean over the hand drill and don t just use your arms. You may experiment with kneeling or even putting the the set up on a table. This can often produce more down pressure. Down pressure needs to be balanced with speed. You can use a lot of speed or a lot of pressure, or both, but they will work equally to produce the heat from friction. Find your balance by watching the results you re getting. 7. Having the right kind of dust is key. You don t want white powder (not enough pressure), it should be dark, but not a fine powder. The type of wood and the condition it is maters. Try lots of different woods if it s not working correctly. 8. A polished mullein tip is not good - means you are not pushing down hard enough. Clean the tip up and get a good deep sound rather than a squeaking sound. You will learn to hear the difference. 9. Once you get a good pile of dust, hammer it out. It should only take about 20-30 seconds until the dusk ignites. If it doesn t, something is wrong. 10. After you think you have a good ember, keep the spindle down in the hearth board and watch for smoke coming from the ember by itself. If it s not smoking on it s own, hit it again with more friction to get it to temperature. Use code "WoodBeard" to get 10% off ASAT Camo: www.asatcamo.com