Hammer wrote:I have seen people who couldn’t keep a fire going with a bottle of charcoal lighter and a blow torch. That’s not an exaggeration…that’s what they were actually using (unsuccessfully) to try and light a fire on a summer afternoon with no wind and low humidity.

I had no idea that you had met my father...

Great write up!

Here's a video I ran across the other day with a bunch of different fire starting strategies as well as tons of other things...



Skip to 4:10 if you are only interested in his array of fire starters.

That was pretty entertaining, too

rw2 wrote:

Hammer wrote:I have seen people who couldn’t keep a fire going with a bottle of charcoal lighter and a blow torch. That’s not an exaggeration…that’s what they were actually using (unsuccessfully) to try and light a fire on a summer afternoon with no wind and low humidity.

I had no idea that you had met my father...

Great write up!

Here's a video I ran across the other day with a bunch of different fire starting strategies as well as tons of other things...

Now that's funny right there.

As the video shows, there are a lot of different ways to start a fire, and being able to get a fire going with a bit of char cloth or the coal from a fire piston will teach a person a lot about the combustion process, but very few of those will do you any good when you're shivering cold and need a fire. I really like how the video author says that this is his hobby, not the best way to get the job done. I've gotten fires going with a bow drill pretty regularly, but only on warm days with low humidity. Other folks are (much) better at it, but for me it'd only be a viable fire option if I planed ahead enough to light my fire at the optimum time of day then tend it till evening. Since it's just as easy to cary matches as a piece of cord for the bow, I don't give it much thought.

He loves his kit and has obviously put a lot of thought into it, but it's exactly the sort of thing that will soon get left in camp. Small and light is the name of the game if it's actually going to be there when you need it.

MTV, I'm interested in why you like the blast match. I tried one and honestly thought it was pretty, er, marginal. (For those not familiar a Blast Match is a pretty stout ferrocerium rod in a plastic case with a built in scraper.) I though it was heavy, expensive, no more efficient than any other ferro rod, and mine broke after a few uses when the plastic welding came apart. After that I still had the ferro rod to scrape with the back of my knife, but compared to some other ferro rods it threw a pretty weak spark... It's harder than some other rods, so less of it scrapes off with each pass.

I glued the ferro rod from my Blast Match onto a handle once the case broke.


And like all other ferro rods, the Blast Match has no ability to dry out and pre-heat non-optimal tinder. The spark is hot, but brief. Ferro rods work great with premium natural tinder such as birch bark or fine cuts of fatwood, or manufactured tinder like Wet Fire or petroleum soaked cotton, but the spark from a ferro rod would never ignite the course, wet shaving piles I use in my previous examples. At least I was never able to make it work.

Not trying to pick a fight here, just curious why you like them. And congratulations if you've actually settled on one knife! I've never been able to do that.

Contactflying: if I plagiarized you, sorry. I do that a lot. I've never had an original thought in my life.

Interesting thread.

Hammer said:

or fine cuts of fatwood

Is fatwood what you call pitch wood? My grandpa called it trading wood. Meaning it is valuable.

My fire starting equipment is a zip lock bag with a couple books of gopher matches and a swiss army pocket knife with a saw blade. The matches stay in an inside pocket of my cold weather coats and the knife stays in my pants pocket year round.

The tactic for wet weather fire starting is to go a stump or the roots of a down tree and cut shavings of pitch wood almost always found there. Ponderosa pine if available, doug fir or larch are my next choice. The saw blade on the pocket knife is used to cut a curf to shave towards with the knife blade if a chunk that can be shaved with the blade can't be completely cut or pulled off otherwise.

For 31 years my job was to light fires all winter and put them out all summer.

My wife's family calls it "fat lighter." I didn't know it existed until I met them.

Great article, Hammer! Very useful information. Winter mountaineering in Maine during high school taught me a lot about what was important when starting a fire in suboptimal conditions. Taking your time preparing to get a fire going is the fastest way to do it, for sure!

My family laughs at me and my tinder box on camping trips, but they've all learned to build a fire the right way over the years. I want to experiment with some of the other techniques from the video, too. A magnifying glass has been in my fire starting kit for my flying survival vest since I put it together as well.

Hammer wrote:MTV, I'm interested in why you like the blast match. I tried one and honestly thought it was pretty, er, marginal. (For those not familiar a Blast Match is a pretty stout ferrocerium rod in a plastic case with a built in scraper.) I though it was heavy, expensive, no more efficient than any other ferro rod, and mine broke after a few uses when the plastic welding came apart. After that I still had the ferro rod to scrape with the back of my knife, but compared to some other ferro rods it threw a pretty weak spark... It's harder than some other rods, so less of it scrapes off with each pass.

I glued the ferro rod from my Blast Match onto a handle once the case broke.


And like all other ferro rods, the Blast Match has no ability to dry out and pre-heat non-optimal tinder. The spark is hot, but brief. Ferro rods work great with premium natural tinder such as birch bark or fine cuts of fatwood, or manufactured tinder like Wet Fire or petroleum soaked cotton, but the spark from a ferro rod would never ignite the course, wet shaving piles I use in my previous examples. At least I was never able to make it work.

Not trying to pick a fight here, just curious why you like them. And congratulations if you've actually settled on one knife! I've never been able to do that..

Hammer,

My brief comment wasn't sufficient to explain where I was coming from reference the Blast Match. I always carry at least three means to start a fire. The Blast Match is one of those. While I concur that the ferro rods are perhaps the least effective means to start a fire, they do work when you've done a good job of preparing your tinder.

BUT, the big reason for the Blast Match is that it's about the only fire starter I've found that works well using only one hand. So, it's the go-to fire starter after an accident where one arm or hand has been disabled. Also, it works pretty well if you're suffering badly from hypothermia, where fine motor skills are degraded. Finally, in extreme cold, the Blast Match can be used with gloves on.

The key to me is having more than one means to start a fire. Since it's difficult at best to predict all the scenarios that one may wind up in during a survival situation, having different options is a good alternative. Having one hand disabled is a very real possibility in a survival situation.

That is also one of the reasons I like the Bench Made folding knives sold by Doug Ritter. They too can be opened with one hand. I've never been a fan of sheath knives, but little bitty pocket knives leave something to be desired as well. I settled on the Bench Made folder since it's easy to carry clipped to my pants pocket pretty much full time. I haven't found other knives that are that convenient, and if it's not convenient, it won't get carried. I'm not enough of a "knife nut" that I'm going to devote any time at all to choosing which knife I'm going to carry today. To me, the knife is just a tool, and the larger Bench Made folders do about 99 % of what I want a knife to do.

MTV

Thanks for the very informative article, and for everyone's choices in cutlery, and backcountry accessories.

The Match case looks like a winner!

Alan

I ordered one of the K&M match cases described by Hammer after reading his article. It has been just about 6 weeks now and my money went to them instantly but I have yet to hear from them or receive what I ordered. So this is a warning to those who might want to order this also. I'm still waiting!
Charles

MontanaT-craft wrote:I ordered one of the K&M match cases described by Hammer after reading his article. It has been just about 6 weeks now and my money went to them instantly but I have yet to hear from them or receive what I ordered. So this is a warning to those who might want to order this also. I'm still waiting!
Charles

I'm really sorry to hear that. I've had noting but great service from them, but haven't ordered anything for about a year. It's a man and wife team working out of their house...they've been great but it probably doesn't take much to put them behind the curve. Regardless they should communicate. I sent them an email on your behalf. I feel somewhat responsible.

MontanaT-craft wrote:I ordered one of the K&M match cases described by Hammer after reading his article. It has been just about 6 weeks now and my money went to them instantly but I have yet to hear from them or receive what I ordered. So this is a warning to those who might want to order this also. I'm still waiting!
Charles

There's a note on their web site that says he's in the midst of cancer treatment and that if you want your match case, don't be calling every other day. I suspect it also implies that you may have a bit of a wait.

Seems to me he's giving fair warning that you may be in for a bit of a wait.

MTV

Never used it but it looks intriguing:

http://gearjunkie.com/camp-fire-bellows

daedaluscan wrote:Never used it but it looks intriguing:

http://gearjunkie.com/camp-fire-bellows

Just don't inhale at the wrong moment....

MTV

daedaluscan wrote:Never used it but it looks intriguing:

http://gearjunkie.com/camp-fire-bellows

It's a potentially useful tool, though generally if you're blowing a lot you didn't prep your tinder and kindling well enough.

The last photo in the link makes it look like he's burning a tire soaked in gasoline...

I know this thread is about lighting a fire, but wondering if the experts could help me out. When my daughter and I were flying with the Iditarod last spring, I couldn't keep a fire going. Camped on the ice of the Tanana and then the Yukon (with Chet and Darcy joining us!), I dug down through the snow and crusty ice to a solid ice layer. I didn't want the fire to simply collapse through the snow and crust, and the walls kept the wind from blowing the heat away.. I dug the pit wide to allow adequate draft and put down a good layer of green boughs to keep the fire up off the ice. I would get a nice raging fire with plenty of coals and had good dry, split wood to keep it going. However, it seemed every night when the temp would fall below -30, the dang fire would not stay going. I would resort to going back to adding more dry shavings and kindling, blowing on the fire and openiing the pit to make sure it wasn't lack of airflow. The base of the fire was not wet and stayed protected from the ice below. Thoughts?

After some effort at keeping things going, and with temps headed into the -40s, it repeatedly seemed a good time to crawl into the sleeping bag and get warm. As has been mentioned by Hammer and others though, I like to keep things in mind for when they are really needed. What if I didn't have a nice tent and bag to fall back to. What if I really needed that fire?

The variable I was concerned with is whether, after having a raging blaze for an hour or so, I was getting melt water causing the fire to die out. Evaluating, I don't think this was the case. Since it happened 3 separate nights and always about the same temp, I am thinking that was the main obstacle. Going back to chemisty, a fire being a chemical reaction, and rate of reaction being affected by temperature, it certainly makes sense. But then how to overcome this? The fire pits were about 1.5 to 2 foot deep and keeping them narrowed down didn't seem to have much effect on holding in heat at those temps. If this is a survival fire, I'm going to want the pit big enough that I can lay down next to the fire and be shielded from any wind. Don't think the Dakota Fire Hole will work for that.

Thinking the two ways to deal with the smoldering / simmering fire at subzero temps would be to 1. enclose the space to hold in heat and keep the reaction temp up. 2. Choice of combustibles. For #1, I am open to ideas, but it almost seems like the trend would be toward building some sort of ventilated snow structure / igloo. For #2, at the time, I think we had a bunch of birch wood which was cut and split. I like the idea of more volatile sap and should have been looking for spruce and such. Have always worked on the premise of getting a fire going and then build up the size of the wood you get burning and get a bed of coals so it will burn self sustained for a while. Perhaps in a situation when the temp is dropping you just need to sit there whittling into the fire all night to keep it going - that is about all that would actively burn for me. Thanks for any knowledgeable insight.
Matt

You pretty much nailed it Matt,
As far as cellulose is concerned solids and liquids don't burn, only gasses burn. For cellulose (wood fiber) to turn into a gas it has to reach a high temperature, and that is directly affected by the environmental temperature. Even in warm air wild land fuels will burn as much as 50% faster in direct sun than in shade because they reach the out-gassing temperature that much faster.

The reason you can't have a one-stick fire is because it cannot generate enough heat to continue sublimating the cellulose into gas. Multiple sticks in close proximity to each other radiate heat and essentially keep each other warm enough to continue the outgassing and thus the combustion. Too close and there isn't enough O2 for combustion to continue. Too far apart and they don't heat each other enough to sustain combustion.

When people poke at a fire, they are arranging the fuel to ideal distances for combustion, whether they realize it or not. At -30 that distance is much more critical than at +30. As your fire burns down the pieces of wood get smaller and essentially get further away from each other and they cool off. They might continue to burn at a warmer temperature, but not in that extreme cold.

One solution, and the best solution if it's available, is to build a bigger fire. The larger the thermal mass, the less the environmental temperature will effect combustion. A fire capable of cremating an adult human burns well at -30 where a smaller fire struggles. Prime fire wood is also very important. Before cellulose can sublimate into gas all excess moisture has to evaporate, and that takes a lot of heat. The drier the wood the less heat is needed to make it combust. While wood with a high pitch content will burn more enthusiastically than low pitch wood, dry, split birch is about as good a firewood as there is. Pitchy wood also tends to throw a lot of sparks...

The finer the wood is cut the more surface area that's exposed and the more heat the fire can generate in a short amount of time. If you split a log into kindling or whittle it into shavings or burn it whole in a stove, the same amount of heat will be released, but the duration and intensity of the heat will be different.

Reflecting heat back to the fuel also works...that's one reason wood burns better in a stove than in an open fire. Of course the flip side to that is the reflected heat that's keeping the fire going isn't reaching you. A titanium or stainless steel stove will burn wood more effectively, both because of the heat radiated back to the fuel and because the air flow is controlled and directed more efficiently, but you'll receive much less radiated heat than with an open fire.

An open reflector, whether steel, snow, or logs will increase the warmth you'll feel from the fire, but other than steel sheeting right next to the fire the improvement in combustion will be somewhat valuable but not dramatic.

The obvious solution here if the wood supply is limited is a stove and a membrane (tent) to capture the heated air.

In a survival situation in those temperatures I'd park myself next to the largest supply of firewood I could find and build a fire two feet longer than I am tall and large enough that I had to stay one long pace back from it. A long fire radiates heat equally to the length of a supine person and utilizes longer pieces of wood. Making the fire longer than you are tall compensates for the poor combustion at each end. A reflective surface behind the person is advantageous, but if it's more than about one foot away it's of little value. A platform that raises the person 6" above the level of the fire will increase warmth, and insulation from the ground/snow/ice is absolutely critical. A log between the platform and the fire can keep a snow platform from melting out from under you. Regardless, it's going to be along night...

Sometimes the only solution (for me) is to whittle and stoke the fire with kindling. Wet & cold combustion sources need more surface area and the distribution of heat takes a physical promotion (by cutting it up).

During colder temperatures the oxidizing fuel require a richer mixture ( fuel to air ratio ) and more surface area to spread heat faster.

Not verified scientifically. Just my observation. California, Oregon.

Thanks for all of the useful tips! It's refreshing to see different ideas and equipment when it comes to making a fire.

Alan

I use a delta stormproof lighter. I really like being able to shoot the flame sideways under my tinder without burning my thumb. Spendy, but worth it if you get out in situations where you may not be warm enough to use your fingers a lot. I carry firestarters in my pack that I make out of sawdust and wax poured into a paper egg carton. Waterproof, compact, and highly flammable.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Windmill-Delta-STORMPROOF-WINDPROOF-All-Weather-LIGHTER-Camping-Survival-Gear-/381419996100?hash=item58ce6743c4:g:gVQAAOxyzi9Sj4ux

More info from the newspaper in McCarthy, the Wrangell St. Elias News:

A
s our breath hangs in the
frosty autumn air,
thoughts turn to protecting
our fragile selves from the inevitable
deep freeze. Many Alaskans
choose wood heat to make the winter
more bearable.
Burning firewood provides
warmth by releasing stored energy
from the sun that trees have converted
to mass we can use. British
thermal units, or BTU, define the
energy provided by a certain species
of wood. A BTU is the amount of
energy it takes to increase the temperature
of one pound (one pint) of
water by one degree Fahrenheit.
Firewood energy is measured in
BTU per cord. A cord is 128 cubic
feet, which is a four-foot by four-foot
by eight-foot pile of wood. If a cord
is cut in one-foot lengths to fit in
the stove, the resulting woodpile
will be 32 feet long and four feet
high.
New Englanders might laugh at
the fact that Alaskans burn birch
and spruce, but hickories and oaks
aren't hardy enough to survive our
winters. Hickory provides about 30
million BTU per cord.
Paper birch, the first choice of
Alaskans, provides 25.4 million BTU
per cord, according to a table on
the energy content of Interior Alaska
trees prepared by George Sampson,
a former Institute of Northern
Forestry research forester. Tamarack,
a tree often mistaken for sickly
spruce because of its spindly
branches, provides 24.8 million BTU
per cord, followed by black and
white spruce at about 20.5 million
BTU, aspen at 18.8 million BTU,
and balsam poplar at 17.5 million
BTU. Sampson's measurements are
for air-dry wood with a 20 percent
moisture content. Wood is considered
dry when it reaches a moisture
content of 15 to 30 percent. Freshly
cut, green wood contains 30 to 60
percent moisture.
Seasoned logs put off much
more heat than wet wood. When a
log is placed inside a stove on top of
other burning logs, it doesn't bring
instant gratification. First, the heat
energy provided by the burning logs
drives off the moisture of the unburned
log, and none of the heat
from the reaction warms the room.
The wetter the log, the more energy
required to dry it out. For that reason,
and because dangerous creosote
deposits increase when burning
wet wood, experts recommend drying
firewood for at least six months
after it's cut live and split, which
should bring the moisture content
down to an acceptable 25 percent.
Of Alaska woods, birch has the
most BTU per cord because it's
dense. This means there's a lot more
wood mass, and therefore energy,
crammed into a birch log than the
same-sized aspen log.
Given that fact, which puts off
more heat-one pound of oven-dry
(no moisture at all) birch or one
pound of oven-dry aspen? It's a trick
question. All oven-dried woods have
about the same energy content,
8,600 BTU per pound. Therefore, if
people sold firewood by the ovendried
pound instead of the cord,
aspen would be just as valuable as
birch, but it would probably take
twice as many woodsheds to store
the same amount of energy.
This forum is a reprint of an
Alaska Science Forum column that
was first written in 1995.