A LIVING HISTORY BLOG.

18TH CENTURY LIVING HISTORY IN AUSTRALIA.

Saturday 17 December 2011

Fire-Bow Fire Lighting.

People have been requesting that I make this video for a long time now, well finally I have got it done. I made this before my hip replacement surgery, and at that time had difficulty getting down on the ground to use the fire-bow. I improvised to make this video by making a platform out of tomahawk target blocks.
The leather thong on the bow which I have been using to instruct others for the past 20 years or so finally broke, and the new thong I used for this video stretched during the making of this video. I decided not to stop, because these things can happen to anyone and I wanted to show that it can still work. I tightened the leather thong by gathering the slack in with my fingers and completed the fire making process. So here it is.
Please note that my method differs slightly from other peoples methods by the fact that I use an extra piece of plant tinder to transfere the ember in the tinder dust to the kindling.

This is just one of the videos available on my latest DVD, Primitive Skills 2.



1 comment:

Bob Mc said...

That's something that I haven't tried yet. Making fire with a ferro rod and char cloth is a piece of cake. I want to try the traditional flint and steel, but we don't have flint locally. We do have quite a bit of quartz though, so I'll give that a try. Maybe try the bow and drill this summer while in camp with plenty of time on my hands.