Making Fire

Myakka

Myakka

Joined
Feb 9, 2004
Messages
1,447
I Love Fire

I love to pratice making and building fires, I try to use as many different methods possible to create it. Here is a few of my fire making tools, Flint and Steel, Strike Any-Where Matches, Glass Lens, Lighter, FireSteel, Boy Scout Hot Spark, Spindle & Fireboard From my Bow & Drill set and various forms of tinder, Junipter Bark bundle,Trioxane Compressed Fuel, and WetFire.

What is your favorite method to start a fire?

FireTools28307.jpg
 
Good selection! You could add: cotton smeared with petroleum jelly (super tinder!); candle stub (long-lasting flame and tinder of a sort); gun powder (woosh!); dry cell battery and wire (to strike spark); magnesium bar (shavings are SUPER tinder); hardened pine sap (check Scots Pines especially for lumps of this great tinder)
 
ONE wooden match.

No chemical or fuel helpers at all.

I feel like whether a fire will go or not depends on what you do before the match is ever struck.
 
Could someone list which combos of wood make a good bow and drill setup. I understand that the flat piece must be harder than the drill. The survival guides I've read state this but fail to tell you which woods are harder than others. Thanks :)
 
My spindle and drill are made from the same wood, sage. I found and made my bow and drill kit during a BOSS survival/field course in the Southern Utah desert, and I have made a fire with it several times. Like The Last Confederate said its all in the preparation of the tinder and firewood that makes a successful Fire.
 
I like dryer lint. Starts fast, every time. Also, if using the heat tabs, embed them in a block of MRE peanut butter first. They will burn for a looooong time.
 
I like using Pine sap. Remember, most pine sap will not light directly. I just take one sheet of toilet paper and grab a piece of sap off a tree. Light the paper and it will burn along time.

Geoff
 
Gasoline, gallons of the stuff. I have never failed to get a one match fire using commercially available refined petroleum products. They really are wonderful for all your firemaking needs.

Seriously speaking, my go-to firemaker is 98% of the time the yellow mini-bic on my canteen pouch. I carry a back-up BSA hotspark and treated cotton or a Blastmatch and wetfire tinder. Mac
 
9-volt and some 000 steel wool. Once, when my zippo was out of fluid, I lit a pipe with toilet paper soaked in rubbing alcohol, with the zippo for a spark.
 
Bow-Drill. I have had the best success with red maple for the spindle and board. I like eastern red-cedar bark for the tinder.
 
Nice one, Pict. Jerry Dennis, a good Michigan outdoor writer, tells the story about his first fishing trip with a for-real Cree guide, way up in Canada. When it came time for shore lunch, he watched the guide gather driftwood, sure he was going to see some amazing fire starting technique known only to the Cree. To his surprise the man took a jerry can out of the canoe and doused the pile with kerosene. Shortly thereafter, over pan-fried walleye, Jerry worked up the nerve to ask why he used kerosene to start the fire. "Do you know a better way?" was the reply.
 
only us folks are obssessed with firemaking, when you see the way that the natives in different parts of the world do it it usually involves some type of flamable petrochemical and a match or lighter. we pride ourselves on this being one of the merit badges of outdoorsmanship, they look at it as just another chore to get done and the faster the better.

alex
 
Anyone can get a fire going using Gas or Kerosene, Making a fire in the wilderness is very spirtual too me, and thats why practice with primitve methods, it brings me closer to nature.
 
Myakka said:
Anyone can get a fire going using Gas or Kerosene, Making a fire in the wilderness is very spirtual too me, and thats why practice with primitve methods, it brings me closer to nature.
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Very well said!

Man's use of fire is a powerful thing, making it with the "ancient" methods can be an amazing experience.


Many years ago I was srupised when I set out toe learn how to start a fire with just one match, how much harder it was than it sounds. It took a lot of practise for me to be able to consistantly make one with any chemical fuels but it became a truly great experience when you learn it.

of course in a real survival situation don't get me wrong I'd use a tanker truck of gas if I had it!
 
Don't get me wrong guys, I'm not busting on primitive methods or skills. I too have worked my palms raw with a hand drill and blowed myself light-headed trying to get embers to produce flames. It can be done and it is very rewarding. it may even save you from a cold night sometime.

Most primitive people I have met in South America used modern means to produce flame. One popular method in rural Brazil is to soak a hunk of bread in either alcohol or gasoline and set it ablaze under the tinder. Practicality over spirituality I guess. Mac
 
Just having some fun with this, guys. Actually I think Myakka's point is very well taken, and in return for it, here's a related quote (maybe distantly so but I think it's in the same general neighborhood) that I memorized years ago:

"The ability to take a sacramental portion of food with your own two hands, by hunting, fishing, gathering or gardening, has as much to do with societal sanity as a day's pay for a day's work." Thomas McGuane
 
A piece of fatwwod drilled to sit on a keyring, a magnesium fire starter, a sparebulb container with paraffin impreagnated cottonballs stuffed inside all on a keyring that I carry with me.
 
Matches or i heard wirewool & battery works well. Though for 'hot' use rust powder i.e iron oxide, Al powder, (coke can or something) and magnesium, light the magnersium and the lot will go to molten Iron in seconds at 3000 degrys celsious. Did i mention i like burning stuff?
 
myopicmouse said:
Though for 'hot' use rust powder i.e iron oxide, Al powder, (coke can or something) and magnesium, light the magnersium and the lot will go to molten Iron in seconds at 3000 degrys celsious. Did i mention i like burning stuff?
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Isn't thermite great stuff????? :D

jaids
 
I've seen people on camping trips brag about their new Zippo or magnesium/steel bar, but have no firebuilding skill whatsoever. The main factor of a survival fire is the construction and the tinder. Give it air and lots of dead twigs to start out with. Work your way up with the bigger stuff. How you start it is up to you.
 
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