Winter & making fire

T

Tuk

Joined
Nov 19, 2005
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18
Although winter is soon over, i've found out that it's very hard to find anything that will catch fire from Firesteel in winter, atleast here in Finland.

Only thing i've succeeded with so far in winter is birch bark, but birch is not very abundant everywhere.
Ground is full of snow, so anything growing on the ground is generally out of question too.

In summer i have no problems, because there is almost all the time something dry waiting to catch fire.. :)
Using lighter to make fire is easy in winter too, but lighter can broke..

But i was wondering if you guys have some new ideas of how to make fire with Firesteel in snowy conditions in winter for me ?
Wilderness in Finland is probably much like in Canada. (latitude ~60º North)
 
I live north of 60 and can offer my findings. I make a whole pile of thin wood shavings, and use a SAK file to make a good pinch of filings from the firesteel. It gets pretty tedious if there is a good wind, and you don't get it the first time. The thing I usually count on is bringing a good tinder with me. Cotton balls and vaseline are said to work well, but I have yet to use them, fire starter cubes, or best of all, fatwood. I have to buy the fatwood, as I don't know where to find it up here.
According to Ray MEARS' episode on Sweden, there is an abundance of combustibles in the trunk and root system of old dead trees up in your neck of the woods. It is the source of tar that was once a major export, if I remember correctly.

Hope this is some help.
 
There has been several situtions where I was able to start a fire by taking my shoes off and using a really sharp knife to shave all the fuzzies off my socks. I add this to pocket lint and other natural tinder to catch a spark. If you have a really sharp knife you can quickly shave a decent lump of tenaciously buring lint off of blue jeans, socks, sweaters or other clothing items:thumbup:
 
Tuk said:
Although winter is soon over, i've found out that it's very hard to find anything that will catch fire from Firesteel in winter, atleast here in Finland.
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Winter is easier for fires than spring or fall as snow/ice isn't as bad as rain. You can easily knock off snow/ice from woods and it doesn't penetrate, you can even dig up snow and use grasses/woods which can be left exposed even after feet of snow have fallen, however even a light rain quickly makes them useless. The snow also makes it trivial to remove the elements from the equation because it is very easy to make an enclosure from snow but fairly difficult from rain :

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/phil wilson/south fork/south_fork_night_fire.jpg

All the wood that is burning there was covered in snow and ice, it doesn't matter as you just have to beat it off a tree and it will crack off. The only real problem are sudden shifts in weather like +10 C and heavy rain followed by a quick drop to -10 C and you end up with a lot of wood which has ice through it, this means a lot of splitting unless you get lucky.

If there are literally feet of snow on the ground and ice and snow on all the woods then you have to go into the wood to find dry material, look for dead standing trees, ideally around here find the ones which have ants in them, you can actually pull these apart with your hands and the inside can be sheet of almost paper thin wood filled with holes. You can cut down a 12" tree with a folding knife in minutes. Pict has also shown how you can use even the squared spine of a machete to make scrapings, a knife edge can do the same thing, though not as easily.

There are also many species of birds locally which make nests in trees and fill them with really light material, you can find similar in some animal dens in the ground. These are usually hard to find and fairly rare. There are also local species of lichens which work well. Most natural and some synthetic clothing also can be burned, "survivorman" demonstrated this in one of his episodes. Most people carry on them more than enough tinder without even thinking about it. You can also cut your hair off and burn that if you are really stuck. Depending on what you have in it, it can go up like gasoline.

-Cliff
 
You can also cut your hair off and burn that if you are really stuck. Depending on what you have in it, it can go up like gasoline.

-Cliff
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Hair is like wool, it sucks for fire. I found out the easy way.:foot:
 
I've heard it both ways on hair so many times that I am finally going to give it a try.

I know it stinks when it --- does whatever it does when exposed to flame. :o
 
It burns, producing a visible flame, mine does anyway. Different people have different conditions, some are very greasy, some are layered with conditioners and such. Ferro rods produce such a blast of hot sparks their list of tinders is very large, natural single sparks are much harder, I doubt hair would work well there, but I would not want to take a shot from a blast match into my hair. Generally though if you have wood to burn you have tinder if you prepare it so it isn't really much of an issue, outside of fat/blubber fires.

-Cliff
 
Materials:

sheet of aluminum foil (or other heat tolerant flat surface), some type of double boiler apparatus, parafin, cotton balls.

melt parafin in double boiler, dip cotton ball 3/4 of the way into the melted parafin, plop on aluminum foil and let set up until nearly hard but still a little squishy, push all parafined balls together with unsoaked side up until they form into a bar shape the size of a half size ziplock bag, place in bag, smash tops flat. When this hardens you will have a parafin bar with little tufts of untreated cotton sticking out the top. When you need some tinder, break off a cotton ball's worth and fluff up the unwaxed fibers, and strike your firesteel right into the middle of the fluff and blow. Viola, fire. These will burn for up to 15 minutes (depending on how big your cotton balls are) in a 15mph wind in 1/2" of snow with a flame the width and breadth of the cotton ball and 2"-5" high that is hot enough to dry out and start smaller wet branches that you pulled out of the snow to use. I have done this many times with good results.(different wind conditions, but once going, the wind will not blow these out)
 
Even though our winters here are mild as compared to those further north in snow and ice country, I learned early on that if I collect the needed natural materials during the time they are available to me, I will have my tinder bundles made up and with me, when I need them in the wet season.
 
Thanks for ideas, I will definently try how well my hair burns next time it needs cutting :)

Those parafined cotton balls seem to be interesting too. Will definantly try that too.
 
rusty edge said:
.... If you have a really sharp knife you can quickly shave a decent lump of tenaciously buring lint off of blue jeans, socks, sweaters or other clothing items:thumbup:
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Hmmm... perhaps a new use for belly-button lint! :D I can picture that on a Survivorman episode... "I'll just reach in here and pull off a chunk of this stuff"

:)
 
Tuk said:
Although winter is soon over, I've found out that it's very hard to find anything that will catch fire from Firesteel in winter, at least here in Finland.

But i was wondering if you guys have some new ideas of how to make fire with Firesteel in snowy conditions in winter for me ?
Wilderness in Finland is probably much like in Canada. (latitude ~60º North)
Click to expand...

What kind of trees do you have?

Are there any lower branches that are dead and dried out? You can split the wood with a fixed blade knife and then scrape and whittle thin strips that will catch fire with a firesteel/ferro rod.

You know you have to build some kind of platform off of the damp, cold ground to start your fire.
 
Thomas Linton said:
Craig_PHX said:
What kind of trees do you have?
. . .
More pine (P. sylvestrus - "Scot's Pine")) than anything else. Usually these have dead branches, including small trigs, underneath the outer layers.

Also Spruce - and White Birch!!
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Are there any pine stumps around? If there are maybe they have fatwood/pitchwood. Look for a stump that has been there awhile and break/cut off a strip. If is smells like turpentine then you have fatwood. You can light this wood with a match. You can scrap it's side and get a small pile and use your ferro rod. It will catch with a spark and burn with a good flame for about 30 seconds. Fatwood is great kindling and tinder!

Let us know what you find.

Thanks!
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Click to expand...
 
Scot's Pines also "bleed" pitch where wounded, and the hardened pitch is virtual hardened terpentine.
 
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