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On fires...and frustration!

Joezilla

Joezilla

Moderator- Wilderness and Survival Skills
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Whether you are an accomplished woodsbummer, or even starting out, most likely you have encountered more than one situation where trying to make a fire has just down right frustrated you. It could be during the rain, trying to get a bow drill to take off, playing with fire steels, or even just having a bad day getting the logs in the fire place started. Fire can be a tricky and humbling thing to create. The best advice is not to get frustrated with it. I’m still learning it and I thought I could make fire like Godzilla in an oil field. Some times you decide you are going to take care of the fire in the group when camping, out with your kids or buddies, and with all them watching, no flame. Don’t get frustrated and look like a goon. Enjoy it and have a sense of humor, take a step back, and plan the whole fire out. Too humid out for a bow drill? Embrace the moisture, laugh it off, and enjoy the experience that it taught you, you got burned baby!

When prepping a fire, take a long time. Don’t rush the gathering of proper materials just so you can be first with the flame. People end up blowing a fire like mad, and some other guy who may or may not know his stuff goes in from the other side of the recently introduced coal to blow, and BAM, someone gets an ember in their eye. Arr matey, eye patches are for pirates, not fire bugs! Go grab a whole ton of pencil sized sticks rather than just a few, and grab about twice as much as you already have of those tooth pick sized branches just for good measure. Don’t rush it, enjoy the prep as much as the fire itself, and by all means, if its giving you the “business”, enjoy it!


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I remember back in the day being really frustrated trying to build a good fire. I hadn't yet learned that you have to lay a foundation (tinder) first. Over the years I've learned to make fire using a number of different methods, and I enjoy practicing them. But if I have a group of hungry, cold people around waiting for a fire I've learned to do one thing: cheat.

No matter how much fun I have with a bow drill or a fire steel, I'm not above using an accelerant (napalm, anyone?) to get my fire going when people are waiting.

Good thread, Joe.
 
Don't get stuck in traditional (firebow, fireplow, flint/steel) or bushcraft (firesteel/tinder) mode only! have a whole arsenal of stuff to light a fire! candles, kerosene, lighters, fatwood, gas, gunpowder, matches, flares etc etc etc!
 
Bushman5 said:
Don't get stuck in traditional (firebow, fireplow, flint/steel) or bushcraft (firesteel/tinder) mode only! have a whole arsenal of stuff to light a fire! candles, kerosene, lighters, fatwood, gas, gunpowder, matches, flares etc etc etc!
Click to expand...

Bingo! That's kinda what I was saying: cheat!
 
Great post Joe!

I don't know how many times I have misjudged the amount of kindling I needed to get my fire up to speed. Then I find my self rushing off to find lil twigs to keep it going....:o

Take your time and prepare your fire lay correctly!!
 
Bushman5 said:
Don't get stuck in traditional (firebow, fireplow, flint/steel) or bushcraft (firesteel/tinder) mode only! have a whole arsenal of stuff to light a fire! candles, kerosene, lighters, fatwood, gas, gunpowder, matches, flares etc etc etc!
Click to expand...

There is no shame in using a lighter.
 
I've been pretty good at building fires for close to 50 years. I've even won a couple flint and steel fire competitions. Still there are days when the stars don't align and skills can be tested.

Up in Tenn. hunting a week ago the guys where complaining about the wood, it wasn't the best it was wet but not green. I was having no trouble at all. I got it started on the first try but needed to keep after it until it could acclimate the new logs into fire. I had a few small logs of fat lighter and the night before we arrived at camp I was talking with a couple of carpenters building a new porch on one of the cabins at the Cumberland Mountain State Park we spent the evening at. They offered up the old dried out oak boards that they stripped off the cabin. I put a bunch in the back of the pick up. I had old newspaper too that the stove pipe of the tents wood stove was wrapped up in. I started a fire in the stove every night before I went to sleep, I used matches but I could have started these fires in any number of ways. I never had to resort to kerosene, candle wax. PJ cotton balls or any of the other stuff I could have utilized.

It is all about preparation, when I split up the oak boards I did enough to last 5 days, I kept the fire wood under a tarp and enough in the tent to keep me warm for a few nights at a time.

I have had trouble with fire from time to time and it has always been because I was not prepared and the basics could not be scavenged, again it's all preparation. Even still the best of us will struggle from time to time, Murphy's Law still applies.

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I had trouble a few days ago when everything was damp. I got it, but it took me twice as long as normal. Don't know why, the fire started right up, but it just wouldn't take.
 
When I do get a few minutes to have a fire, I savor the moment and spend a good half hour gathering what I want to use from my immediate surroundings, lay it out around a prepared area, sorting by size and quality, etc. It has become something of a ritualistic endeavor and my wife will tease with "got fire yet?!?" while I am preparing. Once my firelay is established and an ember planted, the speed with which a blaze engulfs even my larger fuel is impressive and rewarding.

Not so easy to do when under the gun so I do practice a hasty fire with insufficient/poor tinder, kindling and fuel to intentionally create the frustration Joe mentions just to keep myself on my toes - and humble about it. You really just never know though. It's one thing to challenge yourself in the back yard and something else when the situation is thrust upon you unexpectedly. The best we can do is keep practicing, keep learning, never give up and never, never succumb to perfomance anxiety.
 
Great post Joe, I remember making sure I had plenty of tinder , dry grasses and small twigs and enough wood to fuel the fire
Then rushed in adding the larger stuff before the fire actually was advanced enough to actually ignite the bigger pieces.

As mentioned it's all about having the patience to nurture the flame and preparation.
 
When I first started making fires, I had enough wood, but because of poor preparation, it was always a hard job to get the fire started. Now it is better and I've learned a lot from listening and watching Ray Mears. Take your time, think about how to built up a fire, prepare and then start lighting a fire. Here's a nice video on Ray Mears lighting a fire where he also explains why he builts up the fire like he does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVcHWoT2jmE
 
I enjoy playing around in my woods with making fires. I try as many ways as possible, often trying to get one going with as little tinder as possible.

But I find that when you are out camping with 10 hungry cub scouts standing there watching you,holding hot dog sticks,a road flare comes in handy.:o

Plenty of time later on to show the "harder" ways to start fires.
 
That's funny. No, no, really it is. I should have known it was something like that. I was expecting a regional slang term for a fire maker of some sort, and I guess that's exactly what it is, in a way. You got me on that one (though I'm sure Doc got it right away).
 
If it's really wet what I like to look for is like the really fine dead branches under the living brances of the spruce. Get lots of them. Since they are suspended they are the first thing to dry out.
 
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