My current project is developing a 6 foot fire churn to be used in the opening of a festival in May. It's progressing well and the spindle turns well and is creating friction and smoke! It needs a few tweaks and currently experimenting with the optimum weight of the bearing bar, and will need a few people to help ,me test it out! The idea is to involve many people at  the festival to help welcome in the fire, as apparently was custom by the Celts at Beltane (and Samhain) using large churns like this.  It seems that ritual welcoming of fire is not meant to be easy and the more challenging then the more magical the fire!

A video of my attempt at a rather peculiar friction fire method - the horizontal fire churn! Not efficient, not effective, best to be avoided unless of course it's for ritual! 
And also see the video from India which inspired me to give it a go!