A fire drill, also called a fire-stick, is a device for starting a fire by friction, spinning a wooden spindle against a cavity cut into a stationary piece of wood called the hearth or fireboard until the friction ignites the wood dust produced. The term covers a family of hand-operated methods rather than one fixed design, including the hand drill, the bow drill, and the pump drill, which differ in how the spindle is turned: by the palms directly, by a cord wrapped around a bow, or by a reciprocating plunger. These are ancient fire-making tools that predate matches and still see use in traditional crafts and outdoor skills. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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Introduced When (Circa)Not established by the sources consulted
Friction fire-making by hand drill, bow drill or pump drill is ancient and widespread among indigenous cultures worldwide, but no source consulted (Wikipedia's Fire drill (tool) and Fire making articles) gives a date or era for when the fire drill itself first came into use. OriginTraditional spindles and fireboards use dry, non-resinous woods such as spruce, cedar, yucca or buckeye; Native American peoples of the western United States traditionally used dead buckeye wood for the fireboard. 1 Sources
1. Fire drill (tool) (Wikipedia)
Composition section, wood types and Native American useQuote, Composition section, wood types and Native American use
The spindle and fireboard are typically made from dry, medium-soft non-resinous wood such as spruce, cedar, balsam, yucca, aspen, basswood, buckeye, willow, tamarack, or similar. The Native American Indians along the western coast of the United States traditionally made use of dead wood from the buckeye tree for preparing the fire-board.
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