Today... I failed....

K

kneedragger650

Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
84
Badly. I spent an hour and a half trying to make a fire in the forest behind my house and just couldnt get it to light. Most everything was soaked, but after gathering up some dead leaves and twigs, splitting logs to get dry wood, I thought I was ready to go. So I got out my fire starter and went at it. No matter what I used, I couldn't get my tinder to light the kindling. The cotton balls I had went out after 15 seconds, and I guess the wood just wasn't dry enough.... so much for having my bug out bag actually be "ready" for use.

On a plus side, today showed me where I was lacking in my survival kit. My pack was decent, but i have no outside storage for a water bottle, my fire steel/starter needs to be replaced, and my skills need some serious work. On another plus note, the ESEE 6 and my Izula preformed excellent. They are a great combo.

So post up your fails... or wins of today.
 
no fails or wins today but just wanted to let you know its not as easy as it looks in most the videos. you definitely have to get out there and practice, practice, practice. if its really wet you need to be looking up in the trees for you wood. branches that are dead but haven't fallen to the ground yet, old birds nest, ect. when i first started i was alway so pissed how easy it looked on youtube and other places. but after a good amount of learning it got much easier.

on a side note if you are using cotton balls or cotton balls soaked with vaseline and not getting the fire something is wrong for sure. you have to make sure you split the wood to get to the dry stuff in the center. also have multiple different sizes from pencil lead, to pencil, to thumb size stuff. also you need to have it up off the wet ground in some bark or a built up platform of sort.

either way the key is you got out there and tried. keep at it and sooner or later it will become second nature to you
 
as long as you learned something from that then its all good. you know what happened to the last perfect guy....
did you try splitting the wood to get to the center? usually you can get the dry wood in the center.....the 6 is the perfect tool for the job.

maybe if you include the process some of us can give you some pointers.

i did my weekly firestarting practice with mullein then fatwood then PJCB then dryer lint, then jute twine...each one with one of the three rods i have. worked like a charm.

remember when making a fire prep is CRUCIAL!
 
yup, like grunt soldier posted, practice! if your firesteel produced a spark every time you struck it then it's working perfectly fine and no need to replace it. work on your tinder preparation some more. this post really is a reminder that people need to constantly practice...it cracks me up whenever i see others' pics with unused firesteels all looking pretty and unused all laid out with their kits. you're already way ahead of them just by "failing" today. good job, man. just keep trying and you'll get it!
 
I utterly failed at my first few fires, even when weather conditions were favorable. But i kept practicing for months on end and have now reached a point where i can make a fire within my first attempt. Dosent take more than 3 strikes with the firesteel. Of course, there are still times when heavy rain, sleet or just generally crappy weather makes it all but impossible. The hardest is when its been raining for days, and everything i soaked. Thats when you need to be splitting wood, to get to the dry stuff.

One thing ive learned is preparation is key. Have everything you need ready, tinder, kindling, fuzz sticks, etc. Make sure your fire is kept off the wet ground, make a base of greenwood if you can. Eventually build a small lean-to to protect it from the rain. If strong winds are putting your fire out, you could try digging a pit in the earth, and placing your fire there.

Try to avoid gathering stuff of the ground, like leaves and twigs, if everything is soaked. Go for the standing deadwood. Carry some rubberstrips with you to get your fire going. Birch bark easily catches a spark, also when moist. Fatwood burns when wet.

Like the other BF'ers have said, practice makes perfect. And remember, you learn most from failing!

BTW this thread needs some pictures!

Birch bark is KING! I always look for the characteristic white bark when im out.
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When I started building fire skills I failed bad too. I think I used an entire LMF scout without a single fire. Even sparking takes a bit of practice. My fuzzstick skills suck, so I use fine wood curls.
If you use cotton balls, you best soak them with petroleum jelly. In stead of 15 seconds they burn for a few minutes and hotter too. Should be enough for most small tinder and kindling.
 
Good for you to be out working on fire skills in less then favorable conditions. Definitely not as easy as some make it look. I think everyone has listed the most important tips needed, just keep working on it. Add a Bic and a small tube of vaseline to your kit. Making fire with a fire steel is a good skill to have, but let it be your backup plan if it's not all ready.
I failed my first attempts at the bow drill, fire saw / friction saw, and took forever with a fire steel the first time and all these were done in favorable conditions. I came back here to the forum and beefed up on my knowledge and went back at it.

Thanks for sharing, most folks just post when they succeed. We can't learn from each others mistakes that way...
 
I learn from my mistakes all the time. Yesterday I practiced two fires. Had success both times. My fuzz sticks suck too and I think a lot of fire prep is knowing your materials.

Here in the south we are blessed with a lot of "fat pine". this stuff is really flammable and can even ignite when "damp". HOWEVER I never have much luck with shavings or slivers. But I do when I shave off "powder".

I hold my blade perpendicular to the material and shave off very fine dusting of the stuff. As I shave the material I can rotate it in my hand to keep it nice and smooth. this allows me to get to the "veins" of fat pine that is available all over the place here in North Ga.

I finish my prep with slicing off 4-5 very thin little strips. I usually get flame with one or two strikes of my firesteel. Then I feed those little slivers in and work my way up.

But yeah, in damp conditions its a LOT tougher!

This technique of creating VERY fine shavings REALLY helped my fire starting. Perhaps these pics may be helpful:

When a pine falls and leaves its roots, the roots continue to push up "pitch" into the stump. With a little work you can dig some out. You know you found it when you get a VERY strong pine smell!
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The "fat pine" is seen here in little "veins"... This stuff is AWESOME!! Scrape this off in a powder and its roasting time soon! See how its darker here?
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This is the step that revolutionized fire starting for me... note the VERY fine scrapings.
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Here we go!
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Im no expert by any means... but Ive had some success with this technique.
 
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Like others have said, better to find out in practice and continue to train until you can, than die needing skills you never trained for.
 
PropThePolecat said:
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Click to expand...

RUN DMC would be proud!

***********************

Making fire is simple in principle, but can prove difficult to master.

Practice, practice, practice. Even the "experts" get stumped from time-to-time... the crafts and skills of wilderness survival are tremendous teachers in resourcefulness, patience, and humility.
 
now if I could just get a bow drill fire going I would be a happy camper... talk about "fail's". Im all smoke and sweat and no flame in that arena!
 
It is part of the learning process and it happens to even the best (experts) sometimes as well (there was a thread on it in WSS section). It sucks, but it is a good way to test a few skills, including your vocabulary and patients.
 
excellent job practicing.
i'm anxious to get out there myself.

I don't see a lot of people using magnesium bars, is there any reason behind that?
 
I said once that fire is 95% preparation and 5% combustion. I am guilty of it myself, especially when it is cold out, but I want to get that fire going right now! So I skimp a little on gathering materials and end up dickering with the fire longer than I need to when in the end I’d probably be time ahead to take the time for better preparation.

If you were getting your tinder lit but the kindling wouldn’t take, the problem is the kindling. Find small material, still big enough to be dry inside and quarter it. Take the sharp inside corners and split them off. If you have to split some of it down ¼ the diameter of a pencil, whatever you have to do to get it to take. Take your time and sit down and scrape a whole hat full of fuzz shavings if you have to. Once you have life to the fire, even wet stuff will start to burn.

2 weekends ago we went on a snow hike and it has been snowing and thawing back and forth or raining for the last month. Everything was wet. Once I got some good split wood it was roaring to life.
 
Kudos for getting out there and trying. That's what it's all about. The time to find out you need different gear, or different techniques is not when you already have an emergency.

One thing I always have to remember is that you should collect about 3x the amount of fire material than you think you will need.

SP
 
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what fire steel do you have ?

What kind of cotton balls did ya buy ? you could of grabbed synthetic cotton balls & they will not burn...
 
The key is to get to the dry wood on the inside . Another is blowing ,blow and blow and blow and u shouldn't have a problem . I took one pic of a two fire race my cuz and I had in a snow storm .
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I used a boss street and esee fire steel ,he had a BH bushcrafter and ur standerd run of the mill fire rod.
 
Pic above reminds me of a quote :D

Indian makes small fire, sits close.
White man makes big fire, sits far away.

-- Stalking Wolf
 
Yeah can't argue that we were bored . Started as two small fires turned into one . We had the women out there and it became a bigger competetion between them . After we got the intial fires going we kinda sat back and they keep the logs coming ,quite entertaning. It all ended abruptly though when they were pulling apart a rotting dead tree and killed a field mouse in the process. Boy was that the end of the world ,the guilt nearly killed her.
 
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