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concealing a camp fire
- Thread starter Will
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2005
- Messages
- 3,516
Yeah man, hotdogs of a stick over an open fire. My second favorite to quail breast on a stick over an open fire.
So................did we ever figure out how to hide a campfire?
I think Dakota hole, Alcohol stove, and trioxane have been the suggestions so far - but I got distracted exchanging snappy responses with Liam. Must be an Irish thing
Pat
When I happen to have a rack, I may use it. But even then I push burning sticks aside to have coals under my steak/meat/whatever.
When I don't have a rack, I may put a green wood few sticks over fire as a makeshift rack, or put meat on the coals. It is the quick lazy/no fuss method, might not be the best but still efficient.
Coals roast meat, direct flames will burn it.
I don't discuss too much the fact that flames are quicker, mostly because you'll get a "flame fire" quicker and will get the coals anyway.
Racked around flames heats by radiations from flames.
Coals need little oxygen to burn, or it is little oxygen make them last longer. By the way, you can "burn" (pyrolysis) without oxygen, that's how you make wood coal, and that's partially what happens in the heart of a wood fire.
My first response disappeared into cyber space so I am now typing short sentences and editing.
Rav I'm assuming you typoed when you said "wood coal". I think you meant "wood charcol". Commercial wood charcol is made in a retort, an oven with a vent, so as to drive off the volatile gasses and leave mainly carbon. This happens in an open fire like a campfire when the heat drops off or the wood is buried and can't get enough air. A fireplace dosen't make charcol because the heat of the fire reflects off the walls and back into the fire assuring complete combustion. A campfire leaves charcol mainly at the edges or when a large amount of water is dumped on the fire to put it out. I always try to keep adding the charcol from the edges back into the fire so as to leave only ash. Ash is a natural fertilizer and biologists are thinking ash from a particular region adds a "scent" to the water thus helping fish find their stream.
Coals are the result of the combustion process having run its course. Again the volatile compounds have been driven off but the original wood is now greatly degraded and much of the carbon has been burned off. Coals are less dense and don't last as long as charcol nor do they give off as much heat. That is a good thing for Tarzan cooking as you well know. Coals don't need as much O2 to finish the combustion process as charcol does. We have all read in the news where someone has died due to CO poisoning trying to burn charcol indoors.
One of my favorite stoves is the Sierra Stove. It burns wood and has a battery powered fan so it burns clean. Mine I've had about 15 years, the newer models are even better. If you buy one add the windscreen/cooking grate.
Rav I'm assuming you typoed when you said "wood coal". I think you meant "wood charcol". Commercial wood charcol is made in a retort, an oven with a vent, so as to drive off the volatile gasses and leave mainly carbon. This happens in an open fire like a campfire when the heat drops off or the wood is buried and can't get enough air. A fireplace dosen't make charcol because the heat of the fire reflects off the walls and back into the fire assuring complete combustion. A campfire leaves charcol mainly at the edges or when a large amount of water is dumped on the fire to put it out. I always try to keep adding the charcol from the edges back into the fire so as to leave only ash. Ash is a natural fertilizer and biologists are thinking ash from a particular region adds a "scent" to the water thus helping fish find their stream.
Coals are the result of the combustion process having run its course. Again the volatile compounds have been driven off but the original wood is now greatly degraded and much of the carbon has been burned off. Coals are less dense and don't last as long as charcol nor do they give off as much heat. That is a good thing for Tarzan cooking as you well know. Coals don't need as much O2 to finish the combustion process as charcol does. We have all read in the news where someone has died due to CO poisoning trying to burn charcol indoors.
One of my favorite stoves is the Sierra Stove. It burns wood and has a battery powered fan so it burns clean. Mine I've had about 15 years, the newer models are even better. If you buy one add the windscreen/cooking grate.
Rav isn't thread drift a way of life here?
Charcol briquets are another matter. Some, I'm not sure which, contain coal. Henry Ford is responsible for Kingsford briquets. He had lots of wood left over from producing cars and looked for an outlet fot it. The Kingsford briquet was born.
Charcol briquets are another matter. Some, I'm not sure which, contain coal. Henry Ford is responsible for Kingsford briquets. He had lots of wood left over from producing cars and looked for an outlet fot it. The Kingsford briquet was born.
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2006
- Messages
- 509
I have spent a lot of time where cooking by open fire was the norm and frankly if you are anywhere near a group of people the ability to hunt someone down by the smell of a campfire is nullified by the five hundred cook fires going on around you.
I used that to my advantage when i needed to, I also used small cook fires in confined spaces with small openings to allow for circulation and used a lot of leaves over the top to keep the heat in, steam in most of the places i was doing this was a normal part of the day.
I would never cook skin on in these places as the idea of eating what crawled on the local game animals gave me the willies. a quick skin job, gut and move on. Cook later, in the wilds, a gut pile is usually gone in an hour or two, and will attract attention of those that like the dead. small game split and roasted on a spit will cook in 10 to 15 minutes, usually close to ten, if it will take longer, cut it smaller. two smaller green spits are easier to use than a single spit. allow you to build a small fire, using a location that allows the fire to be kept small and concentrated, like against a rock or dead fall, and cook with the meat leaning up against something.
If you are truly on the run, you just eat later. Or used what can be considered road rations.
I used that to my advantage when i needed to, I also used small cook fires in confined spaces with small openings to allow for circulation and used a lot of leaves over the top to keep the heat in, steam in most of the places i was doing this was a normal part of the day.
I would never cook skin on in these places as the idea of eating what crawled on the local game animals gave me the willies. a quick skin job, gut and move on. Cook later, in the wilds, a gut pile is usually gone in an hour or two, and will attract attention of those that like the dead. small game split and roasted on a spit will cook in 10 to 15 minutes, usually close to ten, if it will take longer, cut it smaller. two smaller green spits are easier to use than a single spit. allow you to build a small fire, using a location that allows the fire to be kept small and concentrated, like against a rock or dead fall, and cook with the meat leaning up against something.
If you are truly on the run, you just eat later. Or used what can be considered road rations.
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2006
- Messages
- 2,718
2dogs and guys...there is charcoal and there is charcoal...you can buy real charcoal at Agway...it is not compressed wood crap...it is called something like "gourmet charcoal"...about $12 a bag. It is real stuff made out of real wood. Of course, if you want to get real creative, you can make your own.
I use the real wood charcoal in my smoker.
- Charcoal BRIQUETTES are compressed Wood Charcoal but have additives like sawdust, lime and even a "release agent" that allows them to be ejected from their molds easier.
Briquettes offer even heat, all the way through, it's predictable and repeatable.
-WOOD CHARCOAL (CHARCOAL) is all natural as described in above posts.
It's wood that has been reduced down to mostly it's carbon element, by cooking off the resins and other by products. It's black and seems very lightweight, aslmost like balsa wood. Check a campfire in the morning, the black chunks, that feel light and airy, almost like a dry sponge, those are pieces of wood charcoal that didn't burn down over night. You can salvage them and re-use them for fire. Wood Charcoal burns hot and very cleanly.
Briquettes can sometimes add a different taste to meat, acidic or acrid. Wood Charcoal burns hot, and depending on the air, the type of wood and size of peices has to be watched more closely to maintain a given temperature. Meat tastes better cook with real Wood Charcoal.
WOOD CHARCOAL is also the real Charcoal they use in "activated" charcoal filters. It is also used as an absorbant, as it has tiny pores and a vast surface area. If your pet eats poison, the vet will give them charcoal to soak it up. They do this for people too. Yuck, it tastes super bad, but, could save your life.
In the wild you could fashion a charcoal filter for filtration of water by using charcoal you have created in the wild.
-COAL is the black rock like stuff, soft and hard, anthracite is the hard stuff.
It's a fossil fuel. Mined out of the ground. Has nothing to do with grilling, BBQ-ing or smoking.
-COALS are the burning embers in a fire. they are the orange pieces that give off a nice glow, and that great radiant heat. They are the "Heart" of a good fire. The burning coals are actually pieces of wood that have reached the CHARCOAL stage. All those tiny pores is what make them radiate heat and burn liek they do. They burn similar to a lantern mantle. Think of them like a sponge, but with with much smaller, microscopic pores.
- Charcoal BRIQUETTES are compressed Wood Charcoal but have additives like sawdust, lime and even a "release agent" that allows them to be ejected from their molds easier.
Briquettes offer even heat, all the way through, it's predictable and repeatable.
-WOOD CHARCOAL (CHARCOAL) is all natural as described in above posts.
It's wood that has been reduced down to mostly it's carbon element, by cooking off the resins and other by products. It's black and seems very lightweight, aslmost like balsa wood. Check a campfire in the morning, the black chunks, that feel light and airy, almost like a dry sponge, those are pieces of wood charcoal that didn't burn down over night. You can salvage them and re-use them for fire. Wood Charcoal burns hot and very cleanly.
Briquettes can sometimes add a different taste to meat, acidic or acrid. Wood Charcoal burns hot, and depending on the air, the type of wood and size of peices has to be watched more closely to maintain a given temperature. Meat tastes better cook with real Wood Charcoal.
WOOD CHARCOAL is also the real Charcoal they use in "activated" charcoal filters. It is also used as an absorbant, as it has tiny pores and a vast surface area. If your pet eats poison, the vet will give them charcoal to soak it up. They do this for people too. Yuck, it tastes super bad, but, could save your life.
In the wild you could fashion a charcoal filter for filtration of water by using charcoal you have created in the wild.
-COAL is the black rock like stuff, soft and hard, anthracite is the hard stuff.
It's a fossil fuel. Mined out of the ground. Has nothing to do with grilling, BBQ-ing or smoking.
-COALS are the burning embers in a fire. they are the orange pieces that give off a nice glow, and that great radiant heat. They are the "Heart" of a good fire. The burning coals are actually pieces of wood that have reached the CHARCOAL stage. All those tiny pores is what make them radiate heat and burn liek they do. They burn similar to a lantern mantle. Think of them like a sponge, but with with much smaller, microscopic pores.
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2005
- Messages
- 887
I've just been reading a bit about the James Gang, and I've noted that on at least more than one occasion they scouted out a "cave" as their hideout for after a raid. From a couple of pictures of the "caves" used, we're not talking a narrow hole into the ground, but a very wide and fairly-deep horizontal slit into a cliff face.
Though I know of no indication that these guys built any cooking fires inside such natural shelters, it seems to me that that arrangement might work fairly well with a small fire. Actually, throughout the Four Corners area of the American Southwest there are plenty of native villages built entirely inside such shallow "caves"--and it stands to reason that plenty of firebuilding and cooking went on in those. One has to think that this setup instantly shields the fire from view from most angles, and that the smoke, etc. would have plenty of opportunity to dissipate, cool, etc. as it works its way upward over the stone surface. Obviously, you'd have to use discretion in adapting the size of your fire to the depth and narrowness of your "cave", lest you find yourself getting smoked like a Virginia ham--but it's pretty clearly worked for some people before.
Though I know of no indication that these guys built any cooking fires inside such natural shelters, it seems to me that that arrangement might work fairly well with a small fire. Actually, throughout the Four Corners area of the American Southwest there are plenty of native villages built entirely inside such shallow "caves"--and it stands to reason that plenty of firebuilding and cooking went on in those. One has to think that this setup instantly shields the fire from view from most angles, and that the smoke, etc. would have plenty of opportunity to dissipate, cool, etc. as it works its way upward over the stone surface. Obviously, you'd have to use discretion in adapting the size of your fire to the depth and narrowness of your "cave", lest you find yourself getting smoked like a Virginia ham--but it's pretty clearly worked for some people before.
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2005
- Messages
- 887
A little off topic, but some of the old Apache stories mention that the vultures can get used to a raiding party's being a reliable source of food, from any spare meat scraps left around--with the result that a flock of vultures can start following a band of people and giving away their presence.
You can have a fire in a decent sized cave.
When you first start it, it's smokey as hell, but, as the cumbustion temps get higher, the smoke is less and burns off, and rises easily.
This sets up a thermal convection, where the fire draws fresh cooler air across the cave floor for combustion, heat drives the smoke and Co2 & CO upward, and it's forced out of the cave by the pressure differential created by the cool air coming in to feed the fire.
This is whay you make the fire closer to the doorway, and stay behind it. Smoke goes the other way to get out, cool air comes in low, to feed fire.
it's a little bit counterintuitive, because you think, the fire is going to suffocate me by using up the oxygen and filling the cave with Co and C02.
Now, if your cave opening hole is much lower than the rear part of the cave, the fire needs to be closer to the cave opening, or you could buld up a pocket of smoke.
The key is a hot, hot fire, thermal convection will take over.
Don't light a fire in a cave then go to sleep immediately, make sure it gets going good, and that the convection is working well.
A cave that slants downward after you enter it would be prime real estate.
When you first start it, it's smokey as hell, but, as the cumbustion temps get higher, the smoke is less and burns off, and rises easily.
This sets up a thermal convection, where the fire draws fresh cooler air across the cave floor for combustion, heat drives the smoke and Co2 & CO upward, and it's forced out of the cave by the pressure differential created by the cool air coming in to feed the fire.
This is whay you make the fire closer to the doorway, and stay behind it. Smoke goes the other way to get out, cool air comes in low, to feed fire.
it's a little bit counterintuitive, because you think, the fire is going to suffocate me by using up the oxygen and filling the cave with Co and C02.
Now, if your cave opening hole is much lower than the rear part of the cave, the fire needs to be closer to the cave opening, or you could buld up a pocket of smoke.
The key is a hot, hot fire, thermal convection will take over.
Don't light a fire in a cave then go to sleep immediately, make sure it gets going good, and that the convection is working well.
A cave that slants downward after you enter it would be prime real estate.