Fire drilling
The fire drill is a primitive method to fire to ignite. A wooden stick drills itself into a flat piece of wood in order to generate glowing wood dust through frictional heat. With this it is then possible to make a tinder nest burn.
Whisk
The simplest form of fire drilling is to use a whisk drill. A stick is placed vertically on a flat piece of wood and then rotated between the hands. The hands must also apply downward pressure so that the shaft creates enough friction in the piece of wood. A small notch must be made in the hole so that the glowing wood dust falls out in a concentrated heap and can collect there.
This method is the most strenuous and more difficult to perform than methods with additional tools.
Fiddle drill
A further development is fire drilling using a fiddle bit . The fiddler bit converts the translation of the hand into a rotation of the rod and thus achieves a higher rotation speed. To hold the drill in the hole, a counterpart made of wood, bone or stone presses on the upper end of the spindle. This makes it possible to apply more pressure than with the method only with your hands. The upper end of the spindle is moistened or lubricated so that the counterpart does not start to smoke.
The fiddle borer was already known in ancient Egypt. Neolithic cylindrical objects up to 8000 years old with conical tips made of incombustible materials such as fired clay or stone or combinations of ceramic and stone found in the Levant are interpreted as fire drills, which is supported by analysis of signs of use and experimental archeology .
Pump drill
The pump drill works in a similar way to the fiddle drill. However, the rotation is achieved by a pump-like hand movement. The drill needs a flywheel and is more difficult to build. However, it requires less force to operate. In addition to generating fire, the drill is also used to drill simple holes. A different tip is used.
As a fire-drilling tool, it was only used by some Eskimos and Iroquois.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b D. S. Davidson: Fire-Making in Australia . In: American Anthropologist . July 1947, p. 426-437 , doi : 10.1525 / aa.1947.49.3.02a00040 .
- ^ Naama Goren-Inbar, Michael Freikman, Yosef Garfinkel, Nigel A. Goring-Morris, Leore Grosman: The earliest matches . In: PLOSone , Volume 7, No. 8, August 2012, e42213, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0042213 .