How to Create Fire in the Rain

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It’s not going to be easy, but I’ll show you the easiest way on how to make a fire in wet conditions.

Must Have Materials:

- a knife

- Magnifying glass

- Magnesium Striker or Steel Striker

- Wax Coated Twine or Candle

- Wax Coated matches

(These are all water proof, if you are going to carry matches make sure they are coated with wax, otherwise they are useless in starting fires, if you drop them in a puddle or get them wet they will remain useable. Dip the match head in some candle wax, and allow them to dry.)

So you’re in a forest situation where everything is wet from passing rain, you need to make a fire. It’s best to start searching for trees that have foliage from the top all the way to the ground like a hemlock tree (sort of looks like a christmas tree). If you can find a tree that has foliage touching the ground, this is your best bet in finding moderately dry tinder. You will find nothing completely dry after it has been done raining, but you can find something. 

So look around underneath a large tree that has low branches touching the ground, find the thinest, driest twigs (usually it’s the branches that are full of water), the driest twigs are found in the middle of large branches. Make sure they are brown, moderately dry and tuck them in your shirt or cotton/wool pocket or jacket, this will help dry it off.

Now that you’ve gathered the driest twigs and things you can find, it’s best to leave them out under direct sun. Use your sweater or shirt as a blanket and lay it down, then place your harvest on the top in direct sunlight. Let them dry out, for 5-10 minutes. You can speed up the drying process by gathering the ends of the shirt or sweater and swinging it around to capture more of the moisture or fold up the cloth over the tinder and continue to leave it out in the sun, this will create some heat to get rid of the excess moisture.

Now that you’ve fluffed up the dry tinder, get it ariated after it’s done drying you can start trying to make a fire (if it doesnt work the first try, keep drying). You can try a few things depending on weather conditions:

1) If the sun is out, you have an opportunity to use your magnifying glass as the firestarter, you may not be able to start a fire with the magnifying glass with the semi-dry tinder, so you would need your candle or wax-coated twine and the magnifying glass to get things started (if you have the opportunity to use the sun, take it, save the matches for another time!). Just place the hot bead of light directly onto the wick and you should have immediate success.. If your wick is wet, cut the top of the candle and ignite the new part of the wick. You can imediately place the candle fire into the dry tinder and keep building the fire up with some new tinder along the way and keep doing this until the fire is large and sustainable.

2) If the sun is not out, it’s okay you still have your dry tinder, your magnesium fire starter, wax and matches.  Build up your tinder in the shape of a triangle, I would scrape some magnesum all around the tinder before striking a match. So after scraping magnesium shards all over your tinder, next try to strike a spark on it, if not successful, get the wax-coated match and strike it on your knife, get the driest, largest twig you can find or if you have a candle or wax coated twine, ignite that first. Then get started igniting the pile and you should be ready to go. Just keep building the fire regardless if the tinder is wet, you will eventually have a nice big fire to cozy up with.

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