Building a Fire

You will hear the saying, "You don't just start a fire, you build it." Before any of this building can be done, pick a dry open place about 10 yards from the nearest tree or dried out grass. The essential ingredients you need to gather up before you can build a fire are tinder, kindling, and fuel.



Tinder is anything that will ignite at a low temperature, such as a fallen bird's nest, dried pine needles, or flaking peeled bark...or if you can't find anything in the woods use a piece of cotton cloth, or maybe if you were camping, a crushed up straw.



Kindling is placed onto the tinder to create more of a flame. It is used to bring the temperature of the fire up to the point where you can start putting less combustible items on it. Examples of kindling are: small twigs, wood split into small pieces, or cardboard if camping.



Both tinder and kindling must be kept dry, and definitely using pieces from small to large, or you'll never build the fire to get the temperature high enough to put on the easiest part of building the fire, fuel.

When I talk about fuel, it is not gasoline, but the largest pieces of wood placed on the fire to keep the temperature burning hot. Fuel can be dry dead branches, the inside of fallen tree branches, or if you are in treeless areas, you could use dry grass, twisted in bunches.



Okay, so now you two know what you need to BUILD a fire, but now what do you need to ignite the all important flame without using man made instruments. The only pictures I could find that I could use without stealing them were from flickr.com
This apparatus is called the bow and drill. It has four parts- bow, drill, fireboard, and socket.



The bow may be made using any tree branch approx. 1/2 inch thick and approx. 20 inches long. A cord or shoestring is attached loosely to each end of the branch. The drill, the straight up and down stick that spins to create enough friction to ignite the tinder, should be 3/4 inch thick and around 10 inches long. The fireboard should be made from a flat piece of wood that is approximately 1/2 inch thick with a depression drilled along the edge with the bow and drill. Notch the depression to the outside of the board. The notch is necessary so the hot wood dust and spark will fall into the tinder. The socket may be made from a flat rock or hardwood. In it a depression must be drilled to hold the drill as straight as possible as the drill spins. After using a lot of energy, moving the bow quickly back and forth, the black dust will eventually catch a spark and get the tinder ignited.

If you have trouble making fire, maybe go to one of our true forefathers and learn from the best...