The other day, I finally decided to make my own fire bow drill. I had a chunk of a cedar 1 x 2 laying around and went to it.

To my amazement it actually worked relatively easy.
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I make the base and the spindle from cedar. The bow is a limb off one of the white pines in my yard and the bearing block has a small ball bearing race cut into it. I used jute twine that I pulled apart for the tinder bundle and kept the fire going by throwing cedar shavings from constructing the spindle on top of the burning tinder bundle.

It took about 30-60 seconds of cranking on the bow and viola! The photo shows the finished product along with the tools I used to make it.

Congrats! It is an accomplishment to be able to make fire from "scratch." Nothing like adding another bush craft skill to your arsenal to give yourself confidence in abilities in the forest should normal things go sideways.

Now that you have mastered the technique, the next step is to get all of your material in a raw state in the woods and translate them into a bow-drill set. This will enrich your skill set by establishing the kinds of woods that serve you well for a base plate, spindle and bearing block. Evergreens are a typical good choice for the bow part, since they are limber enough to create tension, but other wood species can also be used.

Then you can move on to other fire making techniques. In addition to the fire drill, the ones I've already used are flint & steel, Swedish fire steel, magnesium block, fire piston (home made), magnifying lens, and battery/steel wool. Many of these techniques are made easier with the use of char cloth, which is relatively easy to make in the field (but you certainly need to make it well before employing it to make a hand crafted fire). However, I generally make mine at home and carry a small amount tucked in with my emergency kit (along with a little petroleum jelly and cotton balls ... you can just use chap stick in place of the petroleum jelly if it handy or a couple of squirts of hand sanitizer also works).

I still need to hone my skills at making fire by the hand drill, plow and vine friction methods and maybe broaden my range by looking into spontaneous combustion from potentially available chemicals. In addition, I need to expand my eco zone range for finding the right materials to use. All good fun!

Keep up the good work!

dd

Nice work! Thanks.

great job. Making fire from really nothing at all except what you can find around you is always rewarding.