A No Nonsense Approach to Fire Starting in the Woods

averageiowaguy

averageiowaguy

Joined
Mar 22, 2011
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I'm hoping to make a series of videos on fire. I get a lot of questions on fire starting. It isn't complicated. I guess I take a lot of things for granted as common knowledge that aren't.

[video=youtube;RdGGgZA0lS0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdGGgZA0lS0[/video]
 
I appreciate you taking the time to teach. I'm starting my teenaged sons and their friends onto a self-reliant path, and this is a great help. Now if I didn't suck at plants and knots, I'd be in business! Lol.
 
Rockywolf said:
I appreciate you taking the time to teach. I'm starting my teenaged sons and their friends onto a self-reliant path, and this is a great help. Now if I didn't suck at plants and knots, I'd be in business! Lol.
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My advice would be to start with something really easy like I had in the video. It was a sunny day and materials were plentiful. It rained the day before but the materials were already dry enough to light with some tinder. The whole point of the video was to give people some confidence to try a fire in easy conditions. Too much of the info about fires put out there seems to make it more complicated than it needs to be. If one person finds the video worthwhile it was certainly worth making it.
 
averageiowaguy said:
I'm starting with the basics. It will get more advanced as the series goes on.
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I felt a little bad about my post and came back to see if I needed to apologise. I have bad days like most folks. :)
I will try to keep an eye out for your vids bud as I am ok with the basics, but have difficulty with the advanced at times. Part of the reason why I go out in bad weather and or use difficult materials is for real world practice. I have more to learn.
 
Would soaking a piece of wood for 19 hours in a bucket of water qualify it as wet wood? Here is a fire with just such a piece of wood, a knife and a metal match. As requested.

[video=youtube;UdVkFQ8aItQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdVkFQ8aItQ[/video]
 
Cool, you are more for the working practical than the fancy stuff. I tend to use grass instead of the fine shavings, but that may not always be available obviously. Have you ever simply mashed kindling to a fibrous pulp in the cold in order to expedite the process with more surface area ? I tried that for the first time last week and it seemed to help, but I have to experiment with it a bit more. Nice vid, thanks for the effort.
 
upnorth said:
Cool, you are more for the working practical than the fancy stuff. I tend to use grass instead of the fine shavings, but that may not always be available obviously. Have you ever simply mashed kindling to a fibrous pulp in the cold in order to expedite the process with more surface area ? I tried that for the first time last week and it seemed to help, but I have to experiment with it a bit more. Nice vid, thanks for the effort.
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Mashing up the kindling is a GREAT idea. How did you do that? I might steal it.
 
Sometimes I need to remind people that I am not an expert in woodsy stuff. I really am just an average guy from Iowa playing around in the woods. The reason I started the channel is that I saw 'In the Bush with Malcolm Douglas' and he reminded me of my grandfather, who is deceased. I thought about how nice it would be if I had videos of the stuff my grandfather was doing at my age. Then I realized that some day I will have grandchildren and they won't have any video of me, if they care to watch it. I'm not an expert in ANYTHING to do with outdoor living skills. I can keep you healthy out there but that is about it.

[video=youtube;O_TIyNE4Zuk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_TIyNE4Zuk[/video]
 
Episode 2 was NOT fun to make. Purposefully making a fire hard to start just to do it might be OK practice but it really took the fun out of it. The whole time I was doing it I was finding natural tinders and passing by things that would have made a fire SO much easier to start. What would usually take me a maximum of 10 minutes took 1 hour and 7 minutes because I was using methods that I knew were a waste of energy. All of that made for a very frustrating experience. I prefer to use my eyes and my mind to find ways to make things easier, not to just use brute force to get the job done. All of that was a good exercise because it made me think:

1) How much of what I do in the woods is because of dogma?
2) How much of what I do in the woods is based on lore created by armchair commandos?
3) If I were to follow all of the 'rules', would I ever get a fire started in the first place?

So for episode 4 I decided to have fun. All of the rest of the episodes are going to be made using the methods that make the most sense at the time/place.
[video=youtube;8HdCrlYhYnw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HdCrlYhYnw[/video]

PS - If anyone has any suggestions for types of fires they would like to see, for example, firebuilding in the snow, various cooking fires etc. I'll try to work them into the series.
 
I, for one, would enjoy seeing fire-building in the snow, and would appreciate you taking the time to show us.
 
averageiowaguy said:
Mashing up the kindling is a GREAT idea. How did you do that? I might steal it.
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I roll the stuff in my hands and pull the material apart with my fingers, then roll more, shake it, repeat, etc. I've done it with cedar bark, coconut husks, and dried bamboo shavings. It helps you get to the airy, fine hairs instead of the pithiness (new word?) which shakes out of your hand. Definitely helps when using a firesteel.

Iowa, nice videos and enjoyable to watch. Maybe add some stuff about ethics and safety. You know like don't throw wet creek rocks in the fire, they might explode or how to really put a fire out.

Campfire cooking would be a great video!
 
thelastbestplace said:
I roll the stuff in my hands and pull the material apart with my fingers, then roll more, shake it, repeat, etc. I've done it with cedar bark, coconut husks, and dried bamboo shavings. It helps you get to the airy, fine hairs instead of the pithiness (new word?) which shakes out of your hand. Definitely helps when using a firesteel.

Iowa, nice videos and enjoyable to watch. Maybe add some stuff about ethics and safety. You know like don't throw wet creek rocks in the fire, they might explode or how to really put a fire out.

Campfire cooking would be a great video!
Click to expand...

I was thinking you took a piece of wood and bashed it up with two rocks to make it more fiberlike. I process tinder much the way you describe but I suppose I haven't drawn attention to it. In episode 2 I did that with the inner bark of the cottonwood I found, but I didn't use it. I might try the stick with rocks mashup. You're getting credit for that because I got the idea from you.
 
Great vids as always, AIG. How about building a fire for cooking and then make some of your tasty vittles on it?
 
As requested - a little cooking over a fire. We got snow but it all melted. Then it rained and sleeted. A few flurries during the filming but not enough to call it a snow fire. All the wood was damp but it ended up not being a big deal.

[video=youtube;sSprN40KazQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSprN40KazQ[/video]
 
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