“People say that nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day” (Winnie the Pooh)
Last month a young climber died in Vietnam after falling and getting lost. He was high up a mountain and had gashed his arm and hurt his leg, however he had his mobile phone with him and called for help. Tragically by the time they found him he was dead. There haven’t been any details of the cause of death although at that altitude it could have been hypothermia.
If you become lost in the lowland jungles of Malaysia, hypothermia is not a major issue, however an inability to light a fire very much is. Not only does a fire make it easier for a search and rescue team to find you, it also allows you to purify water, cook food, make a brew, keep insects and animals at bay and, perhaps most importantly, it will keep your spirits up.
This got me thinking about how feasible it is to light a fire one-handed: with a lighter and rubber inner tube it is no more difficult than if you have both hands working; with a firesteel only marginally more difficult; but what about friction fire methods?
So I spent a day experimenting on how to set up the bow drill and make it work with one hand. It was quickly apparent that everything becomes much more difficult – carving the spindle, which normally takes less than five minutes, took much longer. With almost every task you need to replace the missing hand with some sort of mechanism to hold things in place – a bit like using a vice in a workshop – so, for example, carving the spindle is much easier if you lash one end to a small sapling and work on the protruding end and then swap it round to finish off the other end.
Then there was the problem of how to press down on the bearing block without the use of one hand. Here the trick is to create a stable structure as you are trying to do so much – one knee presses down on the parang that pins the hearth board, the other knee is used to push down on the bearing block, while you are using a lot of force to work the bow – all of which can easily send you off balance and the spindle spinning off into the bush.
In the video below you will see how I set it all up and the one thing I forgot to mention, although you can see me doing it in the video, is that I am leaning against the sapling to give myself stability. It is also for this reason that I place the spindle quite near to the sapling that I am leaning on – if you put it further along the bearing-cross-beam it all becomes less stable.
Getting a fire from a bow drill one-handed is far from impossible, but it is not easy either and is most definitely time consuming.
However, if nothing else, I hope this video will persuade you to throw another spare lighter into your pack for that unforeseen scenario where you get lost in the jungle and need to start a fire.
Hi Paul,
As usual quite educational.
It’s easier to light a fire with your dominant hand but what if it was your dominant hand that was hurt. Wouldn’t it be harder?
Would it be more practical to find what is found in nature to make a whistle so we can make ourselves heard or to provide contrasts against the green/brown backdrop to be seen better?
On another note, if we are able to start a fire or smoke from a fire, it is best done in an open area where the fire and smoke can be easily seen from afar and above.. In a dense jungle, the smoke tend to dissipate under the trees and can be mistaken as mist or fog, from afar. Are there any natural resources that we can add to the fire to change the colour of the smoke?
Hi Shafie,
Many thanks for the comment and sorry for this slow reply but I’ve been tied up with other stuff for the last month. You are absolutely right that it would be more difficult to do the bowdrill if your dominant hand was out of action….I think it could still be done but the carving of the set would be much more difficult.
You are also right that there other ways of attracting attention if you are lost, however a fire doesn’t just help people find you it keeps insects and animals at bay, lifts your spirits and allows you to cook and boil water etc.
The thing I have noticed about fires in the jungle is that it’s not that you necessarily see the smoke but rather that you smell it from quite far away…this assumes a search party of people are looking for you rather than an air search.
If it is and air search going on then you would want to find a clear area and light a very big fire indeed!
As for getting the fire to smoke heavily all you need to do is collect green leaves and throw those on the fire.
Cheers!
Paul
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the video, I’m impressed how easy it seems to be when you are doing the bowdrill!
Take care !
Hi Wawa,
Good to hear from you as always and sorry for slow reply. Anyway glad you liked the bowdrill video and I’m about to upload another one on that subject. Actually the bowdrill is the easiest of the friction fire methods and a good one to learn, the trick is finding and recognising the right types of wood to use.
Cheers!
Paul