Cliff Stamp
BANNED
- Joined
- Oct 5, 1998
- Messages
- 17,562
Well what better way to spend an evening with friends than outside in the rain and snow, at night, in an overcast sky in the middle of the woods, pitch black where you can't see your hand in front of your face. The goal : start a fire with no accelerants (meaning gas or flares mainly) and only a small amount of prepared tinder (something that fits in an Altoids tin). The reward : a bottle of 15 year old Macallan.
I had made fires in all of those conditions before, but never all at the one time, and it didn't make things easy. In the dark is pretty bad, you can't see anything, and I mean anything, if you lay down your knife it is pretty much gone, so you have to be really careful about old habits, even sticking it in a tree or similar, forget it. I was really wishing for a luminescent grip. Everything is by feel and you don't want to be feeling for a sharp blade on the ground or having someone else smack into it.
Cutting shavings is also problematic as you can't see them, people quickly shed their coats and used them to catches scrapings and shavings, others made fuzz sticks which also worked, but it was raining so much that by the time you carved the stick it was too wet to light (this was after carving off 1/4" of the outside to get to dry wood inside) so even storing it inside your coat/shirt didn't work.
Within 10-15 minutes everyone started building mini shelters using coats under trees to make a rain break, there were no really thick trees immediately present (I picked the location). It was also hard to get a base as everything was covered with snow and slush and there were no decent heavy bark trees (I picked the location), what worked best was to break off green boughs, shake them off and place them on a bed of rocks.
However you had to go barehanded as wet gloves can't handle dry tinder, and all of this was making bare handed work really uncomfortable, the rocks were buried in snow/ice and thus getting them out and moving them isn't pleasant. Some of the knives also had metal handles which were got a fair share of complaints due to the cold.
Here are some general rules learned :
1) the more tinder the better, small balls of vasoline don't work if everything is saturated, they don't provide enough heat, paper and lint is useless for the same reason, excellent to catch a spark or a flame but you need something to actually sustain a flame for at least 5 minutes and you want a large flame volume as in about a litre
2) a flashlight would have been excellent, some people tried working by lighter or worse yet match light (waxed matches helped) but this wastes a lot and causes a lot of burned fingers, plus with a flashlight you would have noted no less than four bough caves built in no less than a 30 foot radius, however unless you actually smacked right into them you would walk right on by
3) rain sucks for building a fire, you have to make a break as soon as possible, you can't prepare tinder without it, once the rain was removed it went from being hard to just annoying as the main factor was just the cold and the numbing fingers, if you work together one person can shelter the other, you can also do this yourself but it is awkward, especially if it is windy and the rain isn't just some straight down.
4) it is actually much better to build a shelter first and then make a fire, it takes maybe 10-15 minutes with light to make a first stage bough cave (frame plus a few inches of boughs), this alone makes a massive difference, I checked several of the ones I had made, some even had just one side, and all of them were not raining inside, though it was wet in there, it wasn't a steady flow of water.
I quickly realized I would build a shelter first, frame out a cave if I didn't find a decent dead fall, ideally use something like this :
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/endura/endura_shelter_I.jpg
which you can frame out one side in about 5 minutes with a decent long knife, clear out the front and underside and pile all of it on the back, this gives a rain break and wind if you are lucky and it comes from the back. If not then fill out the front as well, it takes maybe 10-15 minutes to go to this :
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/endura/endura_shelter_III.jpg
a lot longer in the dark, at least a half an hour, assuming there are enough trees so you don't have to walk to find them, cutting boughs when you can't see them is kind of dangerous, a saw is safer than a blade though much more time consuming. If you have a couple of garbage bags you can make rain breaks very easily, a couple of the guys hauled off their boots and took the plastic bags out (local home made rainboots) and used them to great effectiveness.
Even if you can get a fire going without a wind/rain break, it provides no heat at all as it is very difficult to get it to burn hot as everything is so wet, and you are just getting colder and wetter. The only thing it does it give you some light to move, if I had some gas or oil I might consider it first as it makes the shelter building much easier, but if it was anyway light out and I could see to move, shelter first.
If you are curious as to who won, I did, using knowledge of the enviroment (I picked the location) I "accidently" found one of the premade shelters, took the small cardboard+wax tinder bundle and used it to burn some green boughs, within a couple of minutes I had a self sustaining fire, which was readily burning sticks a fraction of an inch thick, not trimmed and more boughs. Of course the prize was shared among all participants.
I have since modified the cardboard firestarters so now they include an inner core of cotton or lint with some vaseline, this catches with a spark or with the barest of flame contact, and ignites the cardboard core which provides enough heat to burn even fairly wet woods.
A pile of knives were used, a whack of Spyderco folders, plain edged and serrated, a bunch of large knives and some axes including a hatchet and a full size felling axe. Interestingly enough the serrated folders were very well recieved, they make shavings fine and they very aggressively cut boughs. They don't respond well to batoning, but there was little of that done though it would be a consideration for extended use.
-Cliff
I had made fires in all of those conditions before, but never all at the one time, and it didn't make things easy. In the dark is pretty bad, you can't see anything, and I mean anything, if you lay down your knife it is pretty much gone, so you have to be really careful about old habits, even sticking it in a tree or similar, forget it. I was really wishing for a luminescent grip. Everything is by feel and you don't want to be feeling for a sharp blade on the ground or having someone else smack into it.
Cutting shavings is also problematic as you can't see them, people quickly shed their coats and used them to catches scrapings and shavings, others made fuzz sticks which also worked, but it was raining so much that by the time you carved the stick it was too wet to light (this was after carving off 1/4" of the outside to get to dry wood inside) so even storing it inside your coat/shirt didn't work.
Within 10-15 minutes everyone started building mini shelters using coats under trees to make a rain break, there were no really thick trees immediately present (I picked the location). It was also hard to get a base as everything was covered with snow and slush and there were no decent heavy bark trees (I picked the location), what worked best was to break off green boughs, shake them off and place them on a bed of rocks.
However you had to go barehanded as wet gloves can't handle dry tinder, and all of this was making bare handed work really uncomfortable, the rocks were buried in snow/ice and thus getting them out and moving them isn't pleasant. Some of the knives also had metal handles which were got a fair share of complaints due to the cold.
Here are some general rules learned :
1) the more tinder the better, small balls of vasoline don't work if everything is saturated, they don't provide enough heat, paper and lint is useless for the same reason, excellent to catch a spark or a flame but you need something to actually sustain a flame for at least 5 minutes and you want a large flame volume as in about a litre
2) a flashlight would have been excellent, some people tried working by lighter or worse yet match light (waxed matches helped) but this wastes a lot and causes a lot of burned fingers, plus with a flashlight you would have noted no less than four bough caves built in no less than a 30 foot radius, however unless you actually smacked right into them you would walk right on by
3) rain sucks for building a fire, you have to make a break as soon as possible, you can't prepare tinder without it, once the rain was removed it went from being hard to just annoying as the main factor was just the cold and the numbing fingers, if you work together one person can shelter the other, you can also do this yourself but it is awkward, especially if it is windy and the rain isn't just some straight down.
4) it is actually much better to build a shelter first and then make a fire, it takes maybe 10-15 minutes with light to make a first stage bough cave (frame plus a few inches of boughs), this alone makes a massive difference, I checked several of the ones I had made, some even had just one side, and all of them were not raining inside, though it was wet in there, it wasn't a steady flow of water.
I quickly realized I would build a shelter first, frame out a cave if I didn't find a decent dead fall, ideally use something like this :
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/endura/endura_shelter_I.jpg
which you can frame out one side in about 5 minutes with a decent long knife, clear out the front and underside and pile all of it on the back, this gives a rain break and wind if you are lucky and it comes from the back. If not then fill out the front as well, it takes maybe 10-15 minutes to go to this :
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/endura/endura_shelter_III.jpg
a lot longer in the dark, at least a half an hour, assuming there are enough trees so you don't have to walk to find them, cutting boughs when you can't see them is kind of dangerous, a saw is safer than a blade though much more time consuming. If you have a couple of garbage bags you can make rain breaks very easily, a couple of the guys hauled off their boots and took the plastic bags out (local home made rainboots) and used them to great effectiveness.
Even if you can get a fire going without a wind/rain break, it provides no heat at all as it is very difficult to get it to burn hot as everything is so wet, and you are just getting colder and wetter. The only thing it does it give you some light to move, if I had some gas or oil I might consider it first as it makes the shelter building much easier, but if it was anyway light out and I could see to move, shelter first.
If you are curious as to who won, I did, using knowledge of the enviroment (I picked the location) I "accidently" found one of the premade shelters, took the small cardboard+wax tinder bundle and used it to burn some green boughs, within a couple of minutes I had a self sustaining fire, which was readily burning sticks a fraction of an inch thick, not trimmed and more boughs. Of course the prize was shared among all participants.
I have since modified the cardboard firestarters so now they include an inner core of cotton or lint with some vaseline, this catches with a spark or with the barest of flame contact, and ignites the cardboard core which provides enough heat to burn even fairly wet woods.
A pile of knives were used, a whack of Spyderco folders, plain edged and serrated, a bunch of large knives and some axes including a hatchet and a full size felling axe. Interestingly enough the serrated folders were very well recieved, they make shavings fine and they very aggressively cut boughs. They don't respond well to batoning, but there was little of that done though it would be a consideration for extended use.
-Cliff
The tritium tubes cast light too dim to do much of any work by it. But as markers they work well. They are especially handy for keychains carried in the dark depths of a woman's purse.
