Basic Firebow / Bowdrill

I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the firebow, firstly most people call it a bow drill, but a bow drill was a wooden spindle with a flint microlith in the tip used to drill holes in wood in our pre history days, so it's a misnomer even from the start..Also people say about going out in the woods and doing it from scratch when they use knives and paracord for the set up, again a falsehood, if you want to do it from scratch do it with NO modern materials and make everything ON THE DAY, including the cordage then I will applaud you. I have much more respect for the hand drill than the bow drill, but that is a skill I have never mastered.

The firebow is very simple provided you keep to a few simple rules, use the right wood, keep it dry and take your time, If you practice in a control situation like your home you will get an ember to flame in the vast majority of times, there's no magic to it, it's simple, anybody who tells you otherwise is simply perpetuating an illusion

Position yourself comfortably and grip the bow and your bearing block securely, here I'm using a long bow (30" sycamore and it's flexible, probably the opposite of what most people tell you to use!) and a limpet shell for the bearing

Start your bowing action slowly to start with, gently heating up your spindle and hearth board, in this instance it's willow on willow

Once you start to get good smoke, start bowing slightly faster and add a little more downward pressure, keep this going for a dozen more good strokes

Once your pile of dust ( and it doesn't matter if it's coarse or fine dust, darker is the key here so go for black not brown dust) is smoking by itself you have a coal, fan it lightly with your hand to feed it oxygen and help it grow. (note the man made cordage, no illusions here!!)

Add it to your tinder bundle whatever that maybe, here I'm using flax but dry grass, cat tail, thistle down, fireweed etc all help make good tinder bundles

Blow gently on your ember to start then gradually increase the force

in a few seconds you will have fire, it's that simple..don't let anybody tell you it's tricky it just needs a bit of practice..this was the first time I've tried firebow in over a year and from 5 attempts I got 4 embers and 4 to flame and only then because I split the hearth board on one attempt, not too bad for somebody who dislikes the method, however I'll take Flint and Steel anyday!!

Thanks to my son Logan for taking the pictures!!

Following Fallow

We got a very welcome invitation by a couple of friends to come down to their neck of the woods to try and get some sightings of Fallow deer, now as before we've got good pics of sika and reds but never the most common deer in Northern Ireland, the Fallow.

There was great sign everywhere

Great prints

This particular place was full of droppings, tracks and scrapes..We did a lot of stalking for them and saw little until we were heading back to the camp, when we noticed a pair of ears flicking above the bushes and as we turned to move towards it up jumped a fallow hind in her dark winter coat and took off so fast I didn't even have time to turn the camera on never mind get a pic, thing was we moved within 10 feet of her before she jumped up and it makes me wonder how many we actually passed that day but never even saw!! At least we know they are there in good numbers so my quest for a pic of a fallow to finish the holy trinity of deer in NI will hopefully be fulfilled soon.

Finally finished the lime bark cordage project

Well it has taken 2 months to ret the lime bark and enable me to remove the inner bark which will eventually be made into cordage. Most of the writings I've seen say that it takes 2 weeks to ret, however one scandinavian piece I remember reading said it took 8 weeks and this has turned out to be correct, whoever said they can do it in 2 weeks have either never actually done it and are just plagerising others or live in a much more arid place than I do..

I did some in a bucket and some in a stream and unusually the one in the bucket was more orange in colour while the one in the stream was more creamy coloured, have no idea why this is!

Out of the bucket, really smelly and ready to have the inner bark removed

One coil of inner bark removed

Two coils of inner bark removed and out to dry, (repeat for another 6 coils!!)

The bark is relatively good and although not all of an even thickness it was a good learning curve and has provided us with some raw materials for some small projects.

Welig Weekend part 3

We finished the weekend by having a look at the different types of willow that Clive grew on site and also some great tips on what types to use for baskets in the field, however we wanted to see his pole lathe in operation so out it came

Clive setting up and getting ready for action

Starting to turn a green section of ash



Stephen getting to grips with his wood!!

Gibson mastering his stroke

Davy making vast amounts of shavings.

All in all a great time with Clive and I'm sure our paths will cross again in the future..



Welig Weekend part 2

After we had made the tray it was time to start on the basket proper

We were shown the basics of the base then tried one for ourselves

After the bases were complete we had to decide on the particular pattern of weave we wanted to use and most of us went for a French rand with a 3 rod wale thrown in for good measure

Getting ready to start the weave

You can easily see the difference between the 2 types of weave in this picture as the basket begins to take shape

Basic basket completed, I just hope I remember how to do it again in the future!!

We also decided to put on a couple of different types of handles

Happy chappies with what we had accomplished



Wonderful Welig Weekend

We had a great time with Clive down at portaferry at his Welig Crafts Workshop, we had wanted some tutoring in basic basketing techniques and he didn't disappoint. Just to get us used to working with the willow and finding out how to manipulate the wands to make them more pliable he had us make a simple willow tray, these can be made very quickly and will provide you with a multitude of uses..

Selecting the appropriate willow to make into the frame

Use 3 or 4 rods in an overlapping form to create the frame

Frame made and ribs in place ready to have the weavers put in



The first few are the trickiest to put in but once they are in place the rest is a simple weave working from the middle out to each side

It's a wee bit tricky till you get in the sway of things then everything flows very quickly

Once all the weavers are in place it's a simple matter of just trimming them down

And the finished product, you can leave the ends unwoven to allow for hand grips on each side or just weave right till the edge of the frame, it's your choice. They can also be made any size and have a multitude of uses,

More to come!



Tallow Candle

A good friend of mine (Tombear on BCL) has been experimenting with Tallow candles and producing some fantastic work, he likes to keep things as accurate as possible to the period and as such he wanted to use flax wicks, so I made some for him and sent them over and the result you can see below, he will also be making more candles from specially made tin moulds and hopefully I'll be able to show you pics of them when they're done..

Copyright of this picture belongs to him