Keeping a small, wet fire going

myright

myright

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Jan 31, 2008
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Hey fellas - I was playing around last night watching some fire burn, smoking a cigar and drinking a beer and got to thinking.. man - i'm tending to this fire quite a bit. Then I started thinking some more. I had the fire in a pit and it had rained quite a bit recently. I didn't want the new fire sitting on the wet ashes so I moved them to the side but I think the fire was still pulling moisture out of those wet, old coals - thoughts?

Also - All my wood was wet so I split it all in order to get to some dry stuff in the center but man I had a heck of a time getting that fire going. Ironically the larger the log the better it would burn in the long run.

Then - i was thinking about actually being out camping or in a situation in which I really needed a fire for cooking or warmth and thought it would be a reall challenge.

What types of things do you guys do or suggest for starting and keeping a fire going?

One other thing - I used fatwood that was stored in my garage to get it going but I don't have a ton of fatwood so I couldn't just keep dumping that on there - I had enough to get the fire started.
 
myright said:
Hey fellas - I was playing around last night watching some fire burn, smoking a cigar and drinking a beer and got to thinking.. man - i'm tending to this fire quite a bit. Then I started thinking some more. I had the fire in a pit and it had rained quite a bit recently. I didn't want the new fire sitting on the wet ashes so I moved them to the side but I think the fire was still pulling moisture out of those wet, old coals - thoughts?

Also - All my wood was wet so I split it all in order to get to some dry stuff in the center but man I had a heck of a time getting that fire going. Ironically the larger the log the better it would burn in the long run.

Then - i was thinking about actually being out camping or in a situation in which I really needed a fire for cooking or warmth and thought it would be a reall challenge.

What types of things do you guys do or suggest for starting and keeping a fire going?

One other thing - I used fatwood that was stored in my garage to get it going but I don't have a ton of fatwood so I couldn't just keep dumping that on there - I had enough to get the fire started.
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myright, my son & I ran into this problem a couple of years ago camping. It really wasn't a rain downpour, just one of the mist rains that justs keeps everything wet & not wanting to go outside. We would find small dead limbs still on the tree, and we would find the actual "logs" where we could. We pulled the bark off the logs, split them into "baseball bat" size, & stacked them as near to the fire as we could to let the heat help dry them out. We also took one of our garbage bags & made a small lean-to over the logs that were drying to help keep the rain off. As long as we had a blaze going, the logs seemed to dry out quickly enough to feed them into the fire.
If I am not mistaken, I think Mistwalker or Cricket Dave had a thread on this not to long ago. I looked for it, but being I am still learning my way around forums, I could not find it. Hope this helps.
Be safe.
 
I always create a base of dry or at least drier wood to place my fire on... THis keeps it from sucking up moisture from the ground.... and gives the fire n it;s infancy a chance to mature a bit.. than I keep wood stacked close enough to the flames to dry out but not too close to ignite..
 
There really is no easy fix, you want a fire then your gonna have to tend it !

Unless you rig some sort of cover over a small fire in heavy rain it will go out, a large well established fire is your best bet in heavy rain. JMO of course.
 
You guys are going to laugh but I really hadn't even thought of dragging my logs closer to the fire to dry out.

It seemed as if the biggest thing hurting my fire was the moisture it was sucking in from the ground. I'm heading back out tonight to do the same. we'll see how it goes this time.

Thanks fellas!
 
Fire is work. But it's honest and good work.

The obvious challenge in a survival situation is tending a fire while trying to get everything else done. You really need to maintain discipline to watch your fire while working on everything else.
 
Watchful said:
Fire is work. But it's honest and good work.

The obvious challenge in a survival situation is tending a fire while trying to get everything else done. You really need to maintain discipline to watch your fire while working on everything else.
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That's exactly what I was thinking about while tending the fire. How difficult it would have been to get anything done and how easy it would have been to have the fire go out.
 
Wet fire is something I deal with a lot around here. When I am building a fire under wet conditions and on wet ground I either find a piece of bark from the top side of a fallen log or split some rounds to make a flat area for a base. Then I lay wood strategically around the fire forming a windbreak wall / heat reflector and drying the wood all at the same time. It can be a pain to get it going good...it takes work to split larger rounds into smaller pieces that will catch and burn more easily and you need a good bit of this most of the time if things are really wet. Then once I get the fire going I keep adding smaller pieces and burn the fire big and hot for a little while to create a lot of heat so that the moisture doesn't effect it as badly, dry the ground, and dry the wood stacked around the fire. Here in the south I like to use standing dead pines, not so much fatwood as just dead, dry, and still a high resin content. While standing they shed the majority of rain water. This burns hot and will produce a lot of heat in a short time...great for emergency warmth and drying... but doesn't produce the hot coals hardwood will. Alternate splitting the pine and some hardwood as you feed the fire. Save back the split hardwood until the fire is good and hot and then start adding a mix until you get a decent bed of coals. Once you have a good hot bed of coals under a really hot fire the logs around the fire will be drying good also. As you use those replace them. Hard to put it all into words easily but I hope this helps. Maybe I should do a series of videos on this...it will take longer than the ten minutes youtube allows per video.
 
Small clip of wet fire in my wood stove. I had to run the stove fully open in order to keep the fire going. Mind you, this was in a tent at 33 degrees f. It had hailed the day I arrived at the campsite :-)
[youtube]YHogPeWd_KI[/youtube]

This is the tent:
bmm20101026-renkum-0080.jpg


Barry
 
mistwalker said:
Wet fire is something I deal with a lot around here. When I am building a fire under wet conditions and on wet ground I either find a piece of bark from the top side of a fallen log or split some rounds to make a flat area for a base. Then I lay wood strategically around the fire forming a windbreak wall / heat reflector and drying the wood all at the same time. It can be a pain to get it going good...it takes work to split larger rounds into smaller pieces that will catch and burn more easily and you need a good bit of this most of the time if things are really wet. Then once I get the fire going I keep adding smaller pieces and burn the fire big and hot for a little while to create a lot of heat so that the moisture doesn't effect it as badly, dry the ground, and dry the wood stacked around the fire. Here in the south I like to use standing dead pines, not so much fatwood as just dead, dry, and still a high resin content. While standing they shed the majority of rain water. This burns hot and will produce a lot of heat in a short time...great for emergency warmth and drying... but doesn't produce the hot coals hardwood will. Alternate splitting the pine and some hardwood as you feed the fire. Save back the split hardwood until the fire is good and hot and then start adding a mix until you get a decent bed of coals. Once you have a good hot bed of coals under a really hot fire the logs around the fire will be drying good also. As you use those replace them. Hard to put it all into words easily but I hope this helps. Maybe I should do a series of videos on this...it will take longer than the ten minutes youtube allows per video.
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You make a lot of great points and give some good reccomendations. Thanks very much.

It is amazing how much wood dries out in one day. I had my wood sitting on the grass. I made a rack for it and got it up off the ground and let it sit in the sun all day then burned some last night. I had a bunch of non-treated 2x4 scraps laying around that I split and burned. Those things are fun to burn - plenty of heat!
 
myright said:
You guys are going to laugh but I really hadn't even thought of dragging
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You're gonna laugh, but most of us weren't born with an innate understanding of all things bushcraftish. Except for the guys who listen to mice or the spirit of a pretend native grandfather, most of us learned what we know from someone else or by trial and error. I personally prefer learning from a guru over trial, fail, repeat. Errors are often uncomfortable, even painful.

Their truly are no questions worthy of a laugh, but there are many answers which are quite worthy.
 
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Years ago as a kid, while camping on a deer hunt.... we forgot our Coleman stove to cook on. It had been raining for days before we went and everything was soaked.
The only thing we could get to burn was Pine cones....... :D
But they burned quite well and we had hot meals the whole weekend. ;)
 
My right.. creating a wooden base or Just al ayer of sticks or strips of bark.... does allot towards keeping the moisture from the ground away fromt he flames.
 
A scrap of an old tarp will go a long way to covering your wood pile if you are mobile. Long ago in Boy Scouts we used to build the iconic lean-to out of saplings and evergreens to cover our wood supply if rain threatened. We always slept in a tent or under the stars but our wilderness woodshed was great bushcraft practice and it kept us busy for a few hours and I know the scoutmaster was grateful for that.
 
myright said:
You make a lot of great points and give some good reccomendations. Thanks very much.

It is amazing how much wood dries out in one day. I had my wood sitting on the grass. I made a rack for it and got it up off the ground and let it sit in the sun all day then burned some last night. I had a bunch of non-treated 2x4 scraps laying around that I split and burned. Those things are fun to burn - plenty of heat!
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Glad I could offer some help. Being the youngest of two brothers, when we were out in camp commercial fishing and trapping...and hunting... when I was a kid the fire was my responsibility, no matter what the conditions. Whenever I encountered a new condition or we entered a new-to-me environment my father and brother would show me tips for those circumstances. By the time I was 9 in the early 70s I could start and sustain a fire pretty much anywhere there was fuel under pretty much any conditions as long as I had a lighter or matches.
 
rained for 3 days once while camping found a nice dead pine with a base of solid fatwood and split the fatwood logs with a hatchet we had a good bunch of them and kept 1 on the fire at all times they seemed to burn forever and the rain did not get to them.
 
G'day Myright

Silly me, but I forget to add another tip :o

Clothesdrier_firewoodairer.jpg


If your looking to dry out wood that is too large to fit around the fire, then a couple of tripods & a cross beam can be used to lift them off the ground & start the drying process.

BTW, believe it or not, but this set up is actually a multi use piece of equipment that can also be used to dry out clothes :eek:

Who would have thought, that anyone from the Sth Hemisphere might actually know something about life outdoors LOL :D




Kind regards
Mick :D
 
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