I am not a survivalist but I sure am impressed with what you are trying to do!!!
Bookmarking!
Have plenty of patience. That is advice based on experience with this technique.
We go camping approx six times every year at our house, and I've never had luck doing that. OTH Duraflame logs are a handy back-up
Keep a BIC lighter in your pocket and use it when your arm gets tired.
Take some dryer lint and place it at the edge of your cup on the fireboard when you start seeing smoke push some of the lint into the cup and blow gently.
Then go camping. Since everyone will be (secretly) rooting against you, show them what a true genius you are!! Then let them ALL have a try!! :-)
I love watching Survivorman; it's one of the best shows on cable. Ever.
Les makes things look easier than what they are. I don't know how he does it. He has tons of patience and a great ability to adapt to any environment.
You might try making your hearth out of cottonwood or yucca, or sagebrush. Yucca flower stalks make excellent spindles. You don't have to have two different woods for the spindle and hearth. Yucca does well for both.
Cedar can be too oily to catch.
Do you have some good inner bark like cottonwood or juniper or the outer bark of birch to get your fire moving from ember to flame?
(This is my hubby's hobby - he's dictating to me. I've made fire with magnifying glass, but he likes to do things with flint and steel as well, and has worked with a firebow as well.
here are some sites you might like:
http://uqconnect.net/~zzdlittl/aussiefirebow.html
http://www.muzzleblasts.com/vol4no5/articles/mbo45-3.html
First things first. Unless you are wearing nothing but a loincloth, starting the fire with a fire drill would be very difficult. Secondly, having several times the hand strength of a contemporary humans would also help.
Now you know that it would be nearly impossible that someone would successfully use this method for starting a fire on their first/last attempt if they were lost, tired, cold and remembered seeing this technique in a movie 15 years ago.. I always use cottonwood for both the spindle and fire-board. It is strong and light enough for this purpose. No "pine" or softwood types should be used. Cedar might be OK, but cottonwood is near universal and known to work. The key-hole notch shape is important. All you end up with is a glowing pile of ash/carbon dust which is carefully transferred to your tinder-box. It is exhausting. I suppose with practice you might settle on a thin spindle and large bow which would increase the RPM and maybe speed the process.
I was watching a documentary on the USMC Mountain Warfare school and that is one of the skills they had to demonstrate. It looked pretty tough.
If you are having to do this in front of anybody, like your kids, have another tough guy backup. A magnesium bar with the striker and a steel knife will make a fire quickly and still make you look like a survivor man.
Go to you nearest Boy Scout Store and buy the kit. That one works every time. To find the one nearest you go to http://www.scouting.org/nav/enter.jsp?s=xx&c=lc type in your Zip code and press enter. Address and phone # will appear. Give them a call to see if they have one in stock.
Mind you, I've never done this, though I've seen it done at a "Jungle Book" training session. A bit of "char cloth" is the ticket.
http://charcloth.webhop.org/
http://www.rogueturtle.com/articles/charcloth.php
http://www.northwestjournal.ca/I1.htm
A Zippo, extra box of flints, extra wicks and a biggie bottle of go juice.
While I think it's really cool what you're trying to do, I have to ask...why?
I watched Survivorman last night on dish, he started a fire with a lens from a camera (bring a magnifying glass), but it did take him 45 minutes. I say, bring matches.
He also made this bundle of highly flammable stuff, like dry moss, the stuff you pull out from the inside of bark (the hairy stuff), very thin, very lightweight stuff.
That's a quart of camp gas.
I can light a fire with one match.