The bow, about two feet long, may be made of hickory or any springy wood, strung with a stout, hard laid twine. The spindle, of any of the favorite woods, should be about sixteen inches long by three-fourths or one inch in thickness. The top should be rounded and the lower end shaped to a blunt, smooth point. It must be very dry. The block should be an inch or a little more in thickness and of any width and length found convenient, but it should be large enough to be easily held down firmly with the knees when in the kneeling position assumed when working the drill. It should be of the same kind of wood as the spindle. The tinder may be any inflammable material which can easily be fired from the burning dust, such as the shredded inner bark of a cedar tree, very dry and fine, mixed with shreds of white cotton cloth.
To use the outfit the operator cuts a V-shaped notch about three-quarters of an inch deep in the edge of the block. On the flat side of the block at the apex of the notch he then makes a small hole with the point of a knife as a starting place for the spindle. Around this notch he places a small quantity of the tinder. Then, giving the string of the bow a turn around the spindle he kneels on the block, places the point of the spindle on the mark at the point of the notch, places the shell over the other end, and throwing his weight upon the spindle he works the bow back and forth quickly and steadily. The spindle, revolving rapidly, bores its way down into the block, the dust which is worn from the block and spindle filtering down through the notch among the dry tinder. An increasing heat develops from the friction of the dry wood, and soon an odor of scorching wood will be noticed; then a thin wisp of smoke arises from the dust in the notch and this grows stronger, after awhile the smoldering fire itself is visible in the dust which has accumulated in the notch and about the base of the spindle. At this stage the operator stops the drill and blows the fire into flame. All that is necessary then is to place fine, dry twigs over the tinder and then coarser wood, and this wonderful feat of building a fire without matches is accomplished.
Matches are a comparatively recent invention. When this country was first settled they were unknown and fires generally were made by means of flint and steel. By striking glancing blows with a steel object along the edge of a piece of flint, showers of sparks were thrown into a little pile of tinder to be blown into a flame by the fire-kindler. It is said that for an expert the trick was not at all difficult, and that fire could be produced very quickly; but it is obvious that very dry materials were necessary.
To the unfortunate who is cast away on a desert island, like the hero of fiction, this latter method of fire making is the most promising, for he usually has some steel object, even if only a pocket knife and a piece of his coat lining picked into shreds may answer as tinder. The difficulty will be in finding the flint; but that is easy in the story.
But the easiest of all ways to make a fire without matches is by means of a magnifying glass or other lens. A reading glass, if the sun is bright, will produce a fire almost as quickly as it can be made with a match, providing, of course, that it is used the right way. In the absence of a reading glass, a watch or compass crystal, an eye glass, the lens from a field glass or camera, or even a bottle, may be used for concentrating the sun's rays onto a pile of tinder and thus producing a fire. If you are skeptical as to the heat caused by a concentrated light ray, just hold a reading glass a few inches above your hand and turn the glass towards the sun so that a tiny point of intense light is thrown onto your hand and you will be surprised to see how quickly it will burn a blister. A pipe may be lighted that way very easily, something that is worth knowing if one happens to get caught in the woods without matches and with a magnifying glass in his pocket.
But he may not have a glass of any description and then — well here is another way: A man traveling in the woods nearly always carries a gun of some kind. Let him remove the bullet from a cartridge and substitute a small bunch of dry tinder; shredded dry cotton cloth is as good as anything, and loading this cartridge into the gun, fire it into another small pile of tinder and blow the smoldering pile into a flame.
The safest and most convenient way of all is, of course, to carry matches, and to have a portion of them in a waterproof box. Matches are cheap and a waterproof box will not bankrupt a woodsman. I always, when in the woods, carry matches in a waterproof match box, and I never use them except in emergency, carrying my regular supply loose in a small pocket.