Elder for hand-drill - how thick?

[palmnut]

Thinking of having a go and hand-drill fire making as my winter challenge. I've read on here about using 2nd year growth Elder shoots for the drill and I've seen the work-experience student at Woodlore use Elder wood to good effect for a hand-drill (very impressive demo - standing start to fire in hand in about 2 mins 30 secs). I've been looking at what I take to be second year wood today, but it seems to me that the wood/pith ratio is a bit poor.

What diameter stems am I looking for and how thick should the wood be vs the pith for a working drill?

Peter

 

[lannyman8]

not done much work with hand drills yet, but im sure the pith is supposed to be quite big and the "V" notch only goes to the edge of the drilled hole not into the very middle as with the bow drill, this peeps more heat in the set and dust which helps to get a coal....

hope thats of some use, and again im just learning too...

regards.

chris.

 

[adam_myers]

hi plamnut i'm no expert on hand drill although i have made a coal and fire a few times before. the drill should be about 60cm in length although i use one that was only about 30cm as for diameters i've never really looked at the the pith/wood ratio from what i used in the past it's never made much difference i do know that a thin drill gives you more rotations and a thicker drill means more friction i would recomend just trying out a few different drills and see what works

hope i helped a little. post up how you get on and what you find works.

 

[Kepis]

this might help http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79914&pagenumber=

 

[rich59]

..............
What diameter stems am I looking for and how thick should the wood be vs the pith for a working drill? Peter

diameter stem - no smaller than 8mm (except perhaps for hardwood hearths), anything over 16mm gets hard work.

As for wood thickness - the wood must be strong enough not to disintegrate under the work, and also thick enough to wear a wide groove rather than a narrow cut. So we are talking a wood thickness of probably at least 2mm.