Hand Drill in the Snow with Found Materials

I have been able to get on-site hand drill embers during the dry summer, but winters in the Pacific Northwest are exceedingly wet, so I have had a lot of failures trying to find workable materials this time of year.

I have been able to use freshly gathered materials for the hearths all winter, but a dry pithy spindle has been hard to find.

Recently, the moisture has been falling as snow instead of rain, so I tried to seize the opportunity when I noticed some nascent growth big leaf maple suckers that were dead and dry.

I paired it up with a hearth made from a western red cedar branch. The maples suckers are very soft and cedar branches can be quite hard, so I went through sections looking for a piece that had decayed enough to be workable. There’s a trade-off there, as the softer and more rotten sections hold more moisture, so the idea is to find the ideal balance.

Because this was a something of a milestone for me, I left the drilling footage unedited. (2:03 – 4:27)