Best cordage for bow drill friction fire?

[Will_]

Hi, I'd like to know what cordage you all find works best for bow drill friction fires.
I've used paracord which is tough but I find it slips a bit, especially when it's been used a few times.
I tried builders cord (brick line) which seemed to grip pretty well but broke after extended use.
I'm keen to hear other suggestions and if anyone knows what "bank line" is called in the UK I'd also like to know
Thanks in advance,
Will

 

[Kepis]

pull start cord

 

[Mesquite]

What Kepis said.

It's a static cord with high friction resistance so ideal for bow drills.

 

[Will_]

Thanks - I'll give that a shot. Would you go thinner or thicker? There seems to be quite a few options 3mm/4mm/5mm/6mm... 3mm should be plenty right?

 

[Mesquite]

3 or 4mm will be fine and more pliable around a slim or fat drill.

6mm will need a wider drill to rotate around easier

 

[RossMc]

Rawhide is apparently one of the best natural materials for bow drill, not speaking from experience just the little research I've done into the subject, as I'm just starting my own journey into friction fire, hope this helps

 

[Robson Valley]

I use #18 tarred nylon seine twine that I buy in 454g spools from a chandler (Pacific Net & Twine).
It's just barely sticky enough to grab the drill. Using western red cedar for both the drills and the hearth board.

 

[Toddy]

It might not be the best, and it does fray, but it's both effective and cheap....polypropolene rope. It's used to teach and demonstrate twenty odd times a day, every day, and it lasts a couple of days with dozens of people trying it.
You can buy about 30m for a pound (washing line) That's a lot of firelighting.
If you're not going natural, this works, doesn't slip, grips well, and birls just fine.

M

 

[RossMc]

It might not be the best, and it does fray, but it's both effective and cheap....polypropolene rope. It's used to teach and demonstrate twenty odd times a day, every day, and it lasts a couple of days with dozens of people trying it.
You can buy about 30m for a pound (washing line) That's a lot of firelighting.
If you're not going natural, this works, doesn't slip, grips well, and birls just fine.

M

Amazing bit of info, I would never have thought of this.

 

[Jared]

Bank line (tarred twisted nylon) is sold on The Bushcraft Store

 

[Janne]

Being a paleo skill, would not a rope made from natural fiber be the most appropriate?

Sisal? Hemp? Maybe home made from local fiber? Nettle?

Raw hide - will it not get very smooth quickly and start slipping?

 

[Robson Valley]

For cord, all you can ever ask for is whatever the local environment provides.
I am not going to walk 2,000 miles for a meter of sisal.

Here is the PacNW, cord was made from both spruce root and from select western red cedar bark.
Good enough to hook and land 100 kg Pacific Halibut.

Odd but I have yet to see any examples of PacNW fire-making kit.
Maybe I haven't looked hard enough.
My bow is birch the typical length (elbow-fingertip) with the pair of Ravens holding the cord.

Frans Boas recorded measuring one chief's house (cedar plank & frame).
It was 40' wide and 100' long. Lots of the chief's extended family lived in it.
The deal is the chief's fire never went out. Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'Wakw and many others.
If you need fire for your house, you go to the chief's house and get some to take home.
That alone deemphasized the push to become adept at making fire.

 

[Janne]

If you trek from Canada to Sisal country, you will stay there..
Better climate, sun, bush ripe bananas and mangoes are incredibly tasty....
After a month or two, you wake up and discover that you can suddenly pick up stuff from the floor. Arthritis almost gone!

 

[Robson Valley]

Toddy would have the best understanding of what might have been used around UK/Europe.
I've recently read an astounding account of flax/linen cord (UK?) from several thousand years ago.

There are all sorts of specific and local impurities in both flint and obsidian volcanic glass. Source fingerprints.
These were trade goods of great value. Analysis shows that all of North America was a dense web of trade routes.
On a much grander scale, same as finding the exact quarries for Stonehenge.

 

[Janne]

I think the earliest ropes in Europe were from plant fiber, reeds (or similar)?
Flax came to Europe what, 6000 years ago?
Oetzi the proto Austrian has string ropes made from plants ( and sinew and hide) but I do not think they have analysed what plants were used.

 

[Robson Valley]

Very difficult to do any kind of plant identification if all you have are the fiber bundles of sclerenchyma and collenchyma tissues.
At the microscopic level, I need "phytoliths," small fragments of primary plant, leaves are best. Still hard without many, many reference samples.
The kind of fragments that you can pick out of the surface of food grind stones. Starch grains are useful.

Another possibility might be a cord of mixed fiber source. Maybe sinew for strength and plant fiber for friction.
Strictly paleo options.

I've tried tanned leather boot lace, both new and used. New is useless-stretchy.
Used & weathered is better friction but the tensile strength is gone.
I don't know that genuine raw hide would work well as it has to wrap around the drill very tightly with friction.

 

[Toddy]

I don't find rawhide works all that well for it...it's better if it's twisted and plyed up like ordinary cordage though, but it still stretches when it warms up, and it squeaks.....might just be our climate there though, rawhide rots here if you're not careful. That's why we tan skins

Hemp cord is good, but so is willow bast, lime bast, nettle, any of the natural cordages do. Just don't ever expect them to last as long as the bow.
Fiona and I did with rush rope once just to prove that we could.

There's another trick to using a bow to make fire by friction; you can get hold of the cord and tighten it up by gripping it against the bow. Handy when it's slipping, but if you don't get the pressure right too, then you're missing half of the equation.

At the end of the day it's a skill, and it's adaptable re the resources available. Folks used what they had, and there's literally millenia of evidence that humanity has 'made', not just found, fire, so it's not exactly rocket science. It's practice, it's necessity and it's rather fun to be able to do it time after time

I watched Rich do it with just a spindle and a handful of wet leaves; I was impressed
I watched Russ do it with one hand out of action (he'd slashed it open on a sickle caught on a pocket flap), and I was impressed then too
I watched Patrick do it in seconds, time after time, and was impressed then too, and he makes the most beautiful sets of bowdrills and spindles as well.
I watched John demonstrate how to do it and work patiently to have complete beginners making fire, and was impressed.
But first, I watched Alan do it, and watched again, and thought, "I can do that", so I watched some more, and I listened to him, then I collected myself and gave it a shot, and I did it, I made fire, and I was so chuffed with myself
I can make most things, but I hadn't made fire before, not from scratch, and I did it
So, kudos to Alan Torrance, who taught Toddy to make fire many years ago now

M

 

[Ruud]

Taking the innerstrands out of the paracord gives good results, the cord wraps better around the drill.

 

[Robson Valley]

What would the paleo/neolithic options have been? Anybody remember?

 

[rich59]

You seem to have stumped us there. I suspect we are all too young to remember that!

Anyway, the my best cordages for friction fire are more about how I use them than the material. With a natural fibre you can keep it going for many attempts if you use multiple turns around the spindle, and regularly wax it with leaf wax.