
Cord drill and Pump drill [video] - curtis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEl-Y1NvBVI
======
rdtsc
My other favorite of his videos is the sling one:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzDMCVdPwnE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzDMCVdPwnE)

I like how he shows the repeated fails and how it take a long time to practice
to get better at it.

~~~
phyllostachys
That was also my favorite part of that video. How he cuts all of his videos is
very well done. And how he doesn't say anything and only demonstrates, it's
very effective.

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Outdoorsman
Just imagine the increments of time...years, decades, centuries, or more that
likely passed between the individual advances in technique demonstrated...

Fascinating...thanks for posting.

~~~
imglorp
I'm curious where bow drills fit into this progression? They appear easier to
make because you don't need to drill a hole through a rock; you just need a
dimpled rock as top bearing. Also, isn't pressing down with a bow drill making
more friction so faster fires?

~~~
DennisP
You can even use wood as the top bearing in a bow drill, as long as you
lubricate it slightly. It's sufficient to rub it with leaves, or rub your
thumb on the side of your nose and then on the bearing. I've gone to primitive
survival classes, and gotten fire this way; my first, making all the pieces
and learning the technique, took about three days, off and on. My second one
with the same rig took five minutes.

With practice they're fast to make. In one class we divided into groups of
half a dozen, and competed to get the first bow drill fire without using any
pre-made tools. No knives or axes, just whatever rocks we could find. The
winners took less than an hour.

Hand drills are a lot more difficult to use, and I've never gotten the hang of
it. But I've seen some people get hand drill fires pretty reliably in a couple
minutes.

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agumonkey
Of course now would be a good time to watch
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082484/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082484/)

There's nothing primitive about the things demonstrated in his videos. The
self-made / nature friendly / survival ratio is high in my view. But I have a
passion with old and simple but effective and life critical. Also the
importance of geometry, you see how curves and dents will result in sub-
optimal energy conversion. I'd love to find videos about gradual precision
increasing and scale changes (assembling large and or small things in smart
and subtles ways).

Chatting with people on #emacs, I learned that with long weed and time you
could craft fat ropes long enough to build rope bridges. That too was
fascinating.

There's also a few topic on the web about bootstrapping the tech stack from
scratch. Which is a fun thing to imagine too. Which leads to what alternative
path could technology take, maybe there's no need to replay history, one could
quickly go into ceramics, lenses, metals and rapidly assemble radio emitters,
various sensors, and (maybe?) avoid large scale agriculture, oil based devices
etc etc

ps: this
[https://youtu.be/kiHojsMTBeA?t=166](https://youtu.be/kiHojsMTBeA?t=166) is
also pretty smart, how a few cross "sticks" leads to a natural frame for a
basket. How to derive structure and strength from weak bits of plants and
trees.

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bane
Some history on the drills he's using (and others)
[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/12/hand-powered-
drilling...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/12/hand-powered-drilling-
tools-and-machines.html)

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adnans
I can't wait when he reaches the bronze age.

