CGS-101 Part #5 – How to Build a Fire

From Survival and Beyond

This is part 5 of  our Survival 101 course.  If you missed any of the previous lessons, you can click here to start with the orientation.

Knowing how to build a fire is a most important skill to have. Without this skill, one may not be able to cook food, keep warm or possibly be able unable to stay alive. In the cold, one may succumb to hypothermia. Do not let this summer season fool you into complacency. Winter will return and you’d better be able to cope. Besides building your skills for a return of winter, there is still the danger of hypothermia in the summer. Many areas, mine included, are susceptible to storms bringing rain and chilly temperatures especially in the higher elevations. Fire building skills will always be a necessary fundamental for survivalists.

In this lesson, we will focus on building the campfire itself and keeping it going. We will focus on methods of making, catching and building a spark into a fire beginning next week.

Building a fire means you will have to put all of a fire’s components together. That’s tinder, which is quickly combusted by a spark creating flame. Kindling, which is small pencil thin twigs, branches and splinters and are quickly dried and

combusted by the flame created by your tinder. Thin logs that I refer to as starter logs are also a component. Starter logs are dried and combusted by kindling. They are thinner than your regular firewood, but a lot thicker than your kindling. Starter logs are used to get a blaze going and to dry and combust your regular firewood.

All of the above components are designed to create a coal bed. The coal bed is exactly what it sounds like. It is the burned embers and coals from your firewood. The coal bed produces the greatest amount of heat and an updraft of hot, dry air, which dries firewood above it and heats the firewood to combustion.

Putting the necessary components together is simple. You will clear an area of your camp of all debris and anything combustible. In this area you will place a ring of rocks, which will help to keep coals and some sparks confined to your fire. In the center of your fire ring you will place some tinder, which can be paper towels, toilet paper, newspaper, tissue paper, cotton balls soaked in petroleum jelly, char cloth and used gun cleaning patches. Tinder material found in nature is cedar, birch and a few other tree barks, cattail pollen, goatsbeard and dandelion seed cotton, bird’s nests, the pith of plants like elderberry and dry, punky wood.

On your tinder place your kindling which can be any fuel of a small diameter that will combust easily. It is generally

any dry twig or splinter that you can gather. Cedar catches much more readily than any other kindling. Cedar does not make great coals, however. Coals or embers are necessary to keep the fire going and to produce heat. Maple, douglas fir, tamarak and hardwoods are great kindling woods for making coals. Place the cedar on the tinder in order to catch a quick, hot fire and place the other woods on the cedar to create a quickly forming coal bed.

Place the starter logs, as discussed, on top of your kindling before starting the fire. The kindling will catch the starter logs and soon you will have a roaring fire. After your starter logs have combusted you may add firewood as necessary.

To start your fire, place your tinder in the center of your fire ring. Place your kindling on and around your tinder. A lot of people like to use the teepee method when placing their kindling. I like the cross-hatch method myself. This allows me to layer the kindling several layers high and creates a flat table on which to place my starter logs. Because the kindling is laid in a tic-tac-toe pattern it allows flame and hot updraft from the burning tinder to move between and combust the kindling easily. Both methods actually work quite well and either will work for anyone just fine. If you are using the cross-hatch method, lay two starter logs parallel to each other on top of your kindling as though it were a table. Leave some space between the logs for the updraft to move between. This helps the fire to breath. Lay a regular log perpendicular across your starter logs.

Now, its time to strike a spark to your tinder. You may do so by affixing more tinder between two sticks and igniting this, then using it as a match to catch your fire’s tinder or you may strike the spark directly to your fire’s tinder. As

mentioned, there are several methods for striking a spark. We will cover most or all of them. For novices a match or butane lighter will suffice this week.

Under adverse conditions you may have trouble keeping your fire going especially in rain or snow. If your fire is blowing out in wind or rain and snow is blowing in build a reflector out of rock or logs on the side of your fire ring in which the wind is blowing. If your firewood is wet or encased in ice or snow chop away the outer wood to use the drier inner wood which will dry faster and combust on top of smaller kindling and a coal bed. If conditions are too wet for your fire to burn and it keeps going out, you need to feed your fire. Build up a coal bed under your wet wood by continuously adding the driest kindling and any small combustibles possible. Even semi-dry, small combustibles will help. Keeping some dry kindling in your survival kit will help. A bundle of Tootsie Roll Pop suckers are excellent fire building tools. When you are cold and need a fire, unwrap a sucker and bite the stem off. In fact, you’ll want to bite the stems off all of your suckers, but leave the rest wrapped. Suck on one of the suckers for a shot of sugar to give you energy to keep you warm. Crumple the wax paper wrapping of the sucker to use as tinder and use the stems as quick burning kindling which will dry and combust your wood kindling. When you need more sugar or wax paper tinder, you will have the rest of the bundle of suckers sans stems.

Your homework this week is to build a fire and to cook your supper. One more lesson is in order before you build a fire for cooking. All woods are not equal in this. Do not use conifers to cook over. The sap and tar of conifers are laxative at best and often cathartic. Cooking over such wood will ruin the taste of your food and give you diarrhea. Not a good

thing for wilderness survival. Hardwoods are best with Hickory or fruit and nut tree and Maple wood being best in the East. In my area, the Northwest, Vine Maple and Alder are best, while Mesquite, scrub oak, Box Elder and white oak are good in the southwest. Stick with hardwoods for kindling in the case of a cook fire as well. Have fun with this one. You may even hold a cook out if you wish.

Read More at Survival and Beyond

Read more at Survival and Beyond