Prepping – Starting a Fire

I’ve talked about having access to fire in the past, but I haven’t really gotten in depth about how to start one. I figured that was a decent place to go, this Friday, what with all the storm disaster stuff going on. This is a really complex topic, and I’m going to include some videos so that you can see as well as read about the subject. If you have more information, please feel free to add it in the comments below!

So fire is started when three elements come together: fuel, oxygen, and heat. If you have all three, you have what you need to start or continue a fire. Take one away, and if a fire has already started, it will die out. That’s the science end of it. (CalSafe)

We have lots of ways of starting fire, whether it’s for pleasure, cooking, heat, or protection. The easy methods are things like lighters, everstrike matches (metal “matchsticks” that sit in fuel), blow torches, and that sort of thing. Generally speaking, these methods “just work” when you use them. They provide enough of the three elements that you can get a fire going. But what if you don’t have one of these easy methods? What if your fuel has run out, or your flint is used up?

There are ways to start fires that are “in the middle” when it comes to difficulty level. Regular matches are in this category (because they can easily get damp, don’t stay lit very long, and have a tendency to dissolve over time). Strike-anywhere matches are less prone to problems, and usually have much longer stems, which makes them easier to hold. Unfortunately, they aren’t literally strike anywhere, but require a rough surface of some kind to get them lit. I would put the most modern style of ferro rods into this category as well.

Then there are the methods that require a certain level of skill: flint and steel, bow drills, other types of friction styles, and the more esoteric types like using magnifying glasses. To use any of these requires practice, repetition, and education. It is important to learn at least a couple of these more difficult methods in advance of emergencies, because it’s too easy to lose all the easier methods of making fire.

Flint and steel is the most recognizable way of making fire. Anyone who’s watched a cowboy movie or the Little House series has probably seen it. Steel is easy to find, and you can use a knife in an emergency, but it’s nice to have a traditional striker on hand. These will help protect your fingers as you’re learning, because it’s too easy to cut yourself up with the flint as you practice. With flint and steel, you also have to consider what you’re sparking into. What’s your fuel? Many people like to use charcloth to catch their spark, but there are also other ways to do it. For instance, if you use a knife or the sharp edge of your flint to scrape up some of the white part of birch bark, it will make a pile of what looks like very fine sawdust. Sparking into this should allow you to grow the spark into a flame, much as charcloth would. And birch bark is all over New England, and indeed most of the United States. Here’s a great video on flint and steel:

Bow drills are a fun option for making fire. They are, however, a very active method of doing so. Again, this is why we practice, so that we’re not surprised when it’s time to use these skills during emergencies. With a bow drill, you have a base plate with a notch or hole in it, a spindle for spinning and making both sawdust and heat, a cap or palm-stone, and a bow (a string or piece of leather or sinew tied to the two ends of a bent branch or stick). You also need a good, large pile of tinder material. In the video below, the gentleman uses cattail down and the bark of a local tree. You’ll have to investigate what’s local to you, and what will work in damp or wet weather.

The base plate is put on the ground, and you can kneel or stand on it. The spindle has a faceted end and a pointy end, and the faceted end goes into the notch on the base plate. The pointy end of the spindle goes into the cap or palm-stone, in a divot, which allows the spindle to spin freely. The bow string is wrapped around the spindle, and then you “saw” back and forth with the bow. This causes the spindle to spin. You do this until you’ve created enough friction that the faceted end of the spindle creates a little sawdust which gets hot enough to ignite. You then transfer that tiny ember into the tinder material, and blow gently to get it going.

Hand drills are a more difficult method that’s basically the same as the above. I really don’t recommend it, but here’s a video if you want to be a masochist:

Fire roll is yet another method of friction fire you can build. This one relies heavily on having the right material on hand. Here’s the thing, though. If you’re stuck in an emergency situation and you know 8 ways to make a fire, ONE of them is going to work. Knowing several ways means that your backups have backup, and that’s never a bad thing. So a fire roll is made by taking a couple or three cotton balls (plain ones), and unrolling them. You make a kind of long flat of them. Sprinkle them with ash from a previous fire, and then roll it up as tight as you can. It’s sort of like rolling a cigarette. Put the rolled cotton and ash between two pieces of flat wood, and start rolling it back and forth. You’ll want to do that until you smell smoke, and then you can add that ember to your tinder. Here’s a great video on it:

The fire plow is one of the oldest methods of making a fire, and it’s going to expend the most energy. However, you can fall back on it when you have nothing else. Basically, you cut a groove into a flat bit of dry wood, and you cut a sort of wooden wedge that fits into the groove. You then use pressure and speed to run the wedge along the groove until it creates hot sawdust and then creates an ember. The young man in the video below makes it look easy, but it is NOT. I want you to specifically see how, at the point he stops plowing, you can barely see the smoke coming from his pile of sawdust. I didn’t notice it. He doesn’t blow on it, because that will be enough to cause it to go out! He uses his hand to make an extremely light breeze, which allows the ember to catch and grow.

Once you have your ember, in whatever way you’ve made it, you have to transfer it into tinder. Tinder is made of tiny bits of flammable stuff, such as the cattail down mentioned before. Dryer lint can work, but only if you don’t use fabric softener. If you use the softener sheets, they will make your lint much more fireproof. Cotton balls are good, as are the insides of milkweed once it’s gone to seed. Tiny strips of the papery bits of bark can also work. You need to turn the ember (which is very tiny and likely only smoking rather than actually being “on fire”) into a flame. That flame can then be used to create a fire.

If you successfully get your ember to your tinder, and that turns into actual flame, congratulations! Go do it 20 more times and make sure you understand that method. Then go try it a dozen times in the rain. Then do it in the snow, with frozen hands. Practice, practice, practice!

Once you have a small flame, it’s time to actually build the fire. To do so, you should have a variety of sizes of wood near you. Do this before you begin the fire-making process, so that you can go from one step to the next without pausing. Pausing can cause your fire to die, and you don’t want that to happen!

When I’m starting a fire out in the field, I will gather up very small bits of tinder, such as the cattail and milkweed. That’s in one pile. The next pile has tiny strips of birch bark, as small as I can manage them. After that, there’s little pieces of twigs, or if I have them, sappy pine cones (these take off *really* fast and hot). After all that, you want to have piles of fine, medium, and larger kindling, and then small bits of wood, and larger ones. It may seem silly to you to have it all laid out in little piles, but trust me when I say it’ll make your life easier as you make the fire. It’s also a muscle memory thing. Once you get used to doing it this way, it’ll come together very quickly.

When it comes to laying out the larger parts of the fire, there are many ways to do it. I tend to put down a couple of medium sized half logs to block wind, and then I drop my small flame into the space between them. Over the top I begin laying the small tinder, then the kindling, leaning it against or bridging over the two logs. This allows you to use a blow tube or bellows to add oxygen to your fire, in a very controlled way. Once the fire is blazing, you can shove the larger logs together and they’ll burn up just fine. Or you can leave them separated (they’ll still burn eventually) and use them to help you create a good bed of coals for cooking.

Some people like to make a log cabin configuration. Others prefer teepees of wood. When it comes to this part of the fire building process, it really is up to you to practice. The wood you have on hand and the climate you’re dealing with are going to affect the methods you use. I’ll share a little visual here, of the various ways you can make your fire.

There’s one other that isn’t listed here, that I know of and have personally seen used to good effect. That’s the type where you get a good base fire going, and you make two uprights (like a V) and put logs on them. As the bottom logs burn, the top ones roll down and feed the fire. This is a good way to do an overnight fire, if you can do it safely (in other words, no flammable roots or leaves or worries about sparks blowing while your’e asleep).

In closing, keep in mind that fire is a good servant but a deadly master. When you have fire, bank it at night. Don’t go to sleep when there are flames! When possible, cover your coals in ash or with a non-flammable cover (fire blanket, metal lid, etc.). Our ancestors banked their fires and kept their coals alive for good reason: it’s much easier to start a fire from a coal or ember, than it is to start from scratch.