Fire with the hand drill … in TWO SECONDS!

[Nyerges is the author of “How to Survive Anywhere,” and other books. More details on this method of fire-starting can be found in his book. Books available at
www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com.]

Note to Dirttimers: Most of you are probably already aware of these facts, but some of you might not be aware of the amazing feats of Alan Halcon. Read, enjoy, and share with your children as you put them to bed.]

Today, when we think about what we shouldn’t leave home without, commercial TV has trained us to believe that the travelers checks must not be left behind. Of course, there are also keys, credit cards, cell phone.

But if you were born here 500+ years ago, you’d never leave home without some sort of knife and firestarter. For millennia, fire has meant the difference between life and death. This is no less true today than it was thousands of years ago. We have removed ourselves so far from raw nature that we are no longer as aware of our dependence on fire.

In primitive societies, thee were countless ways to produce a fire, to maintain a fire, to transport the fire. Fire was a focal point of daily life and of the society at large. Fire were often prominent in ceremonies and feast days.

More practically, the fire was warmth and protection. Fire was used for cooking and boiling and sterilizing. Fire was used for tool-making and metal making. In many cases, fire was used in the very end when the old ones died, cremation being a quick and sanitary way to deal with dead bodies, while symbolizing the spirit rising upward with the smoke.

In most of pre-contact North America in the past several millenia, the fire starter of choice was the hand drill. The hand drill consists of two pieces of wood: an approximately 18 inch, pencil-thick drill, which is spun onto a flat piece of wood, like a fence slat. A triangular notch is carved onto one edge of the flat piece (the hearth), and the drill is spun onto the hearth at the tip of that notch. As you spin, wood dust flows into the notch and heat develops, and if you don’t faint first, an ember develops which you then place into some ideal tinder, like mugwort, and gently blow on it until you get a flame.

If you have never done this before, outdoor survival teacher Larry Dean Olsen suggests you start about noon if you want a fire by midnight. He is being optimistic.

You need the right type of wood and you need the right body posture and you need lots of guided practice.

My first attempts to do this were humbling failures, as I lay on my patio with blistered palms and no more energy. But in time, with practice, I could do it in under 30 minutes, and today can fairly reliably produce a coal in under 10 minutes. No surprise that only a few hundred people world-wide are believed to be proficient at this method of fire-starting.

ALAN HALCON
But some folks are not content at taking 10 minutes to get a fire by this most primitive of methods. Alan Halcon of Southern California has done it in TWO SECONDS! How did he achieve such a feat?
Halcon says, “I think there has always been this mystique surrounding fire, not just for me, but for everyone. You almost enter into this mystical realm when you are doing this. And this ability to make fire with two pieces of wood and your hands is not only exhilarating, but that fire then can provide you with so many things,” such as warmth, purifying water, signaling ability, etc.

HALCON TOOK A CLASS
Halcon had read about primitive fire-making for years, but finally took a class and learned first hand. He said that it really paid off having someone show him what to do, and not do, the nuances that were not available in books.

“The first time I tried this,” says Halcon, “I felt that there was this innate connection between me and the wood, like a symbiotic relationship. That was over 20 years ago. In the beginning, I was completely obsessed with making fire with the hand drill, and for the first few months, I practiced this about two to three hours a day, often resulting in blisters. I was fascinated with it.”

Halcon points out that this was far more practice than someone would need in order to simply learn how to make fire. But he was focussed on mastering this skill, not simply proficiency.

TYPES OF WOOD
Success in making a fire with the hand drill is a combination of your skill and the quality of your woods. Halcon continually experimented with different woods, and he found out what woods work best, just like generations of primitive skills practitioners have learned before him. For the drill, his material of choice for his area is mulefat. Though you can find and cut a dead and dried mulefat stalk if you need it right away, you get a better drill by cutting it green, during the later stages of growth, and letting it dry. The ideal drill is less than a half-inch thick, about as thick as a pencil, and about 18 inches long. Other woods will work too, such a willow, cottonwood, and hard sections of palm.

For the hearth, willow and cottonwood are some of the universally-used woods. However, Halcon has found that he gets the greatest success with a hearth made of sotol, or the flowering stalk of a fan palm.

THE RACE IS ON
So after about three years of practice, Halcon was able to get a coal in 6.5 seconds with the hand drill, using ash wood as the hearth. As far as I know, that was a world record. Then, in 2006, Halcon decided to beat his own record, and was able to get a coal in 4 seconds. Shortly thereafter, someone on the internet told Halcon that a Canadian had done it in 3.5 seconds.

Is speed really all that important? After all, I am happy to just to be able to do it, and if I can do it under 10 minutes, I am happy indeed.

According to Halcon, “I feel that getting a coal as quickly as possible is important for at least two reasons. First, you are losing less energy if you can get it right away. And second, the quicker you get that coal, the less likely you will get blisters on the palms of your hands, which can lead to infection in a wilderness situation.”

TWO SECONDS
So, in July of 2008 at Pasadena’s Hahamongna Watershed Park, Halcon challenged himself again and, with seven expectant witnesses—one of them me and one with a stop watch—Halcon managed to get that coal in two seconds. (OK, so there was one witness who thinks it was 2.4 seconds, but he was probably just a naysayer.) And then he repeats the feat a second time, and Halcon exploded into the same ritualistic, screaming wild dance that we saw Tom Hanks perform after he created his fire in “Castaway.”

Halcon has written a booklet describing how to master the hand drill, with such details as selection of materials, preparation of the drill and hearth, and body posture. For more details, go to www.TheHandDrill.com.

Many who know Halcon watched his progress over the years, and we all worked at our skills as well. In the very beginning, when Halcon was able to successfully get a coal by himself, the rest of us were working as a group, so that it would take three or four of us working together to get a coal. It took me a long time to get the coal with the hand drill by myself, and that was only because I used the assistance of the thumb cord. The thumb cord can be any material, but I used a piece of parachute cord, about eight inches long with a loop on each end. You place this cord over the top of the hand drill into a nock that you’ve carved. Then, each loop goes into each thumb, and the operator is able to press down without the hands having to go down and up – your hands just stay in one place until you get the coal or quit.

Don’t be too upset if you cannot get a coal with the hand drill in two seconds, or even ten. I am happy to be able to do it in under five minutes. Halcon achieved his record-setting time because he was absolutely obsessed with this over several years, and practiced constantly. So persistence paid off.

Halcon is a member of the Dirttime team , spends his time teaching and consulting on outdoor self-reliance topics. If you’re interested in attending one of his workshops, visit www.OutdoorSelfReliance.com for a complete schedule. His classes run the full gamut of outdoor skills, including – of course – fire-making.