Alternative postures for bow drilling


A month ago I posted a video in which I talked about the component parts of a bow drill set, including different approaches to bow drilling and a number of different materials that you could use for each of those component parts.  I followed that one up with a video showing how to make a bow drill set and then another on posture and technique for bow drilling.

Here’s the fourth video in this series, this one is about alternative postures for bow drilling.  Over the years of teaching bow drilling I’ve worked with people who simply weren’t able to get into the usual posture.  I’ve met several people who couldn’t put any pressure on their wrist due to arthritis and people who couldn’t because of injuries sustained in the past.

So here I show you how to work around these issues as well as how to bow drill if you can’t kneel down by showing some alternative postures for bow drilling.

I filmed this one myself and for the first couple of minutes you can’t see my feet, although it doesn’t detract from the video too much.

Next video on this topic is likely to be about fault finding when it doesn’t work out as you would have liked.

We teach the correct posture and technique as well as alternative postures for bow drilling on the IOL Bushcraft Competency Course.  You can see loads of photos from this course, as well as all of our other courses, on our Facebook page.


About Gary

Lead Instructor at Jack Raven Bushcraft, teaching bushcraft, wilderness and survival skills to groups and individuals.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.