How to Start a Fire from Scratch (Or Impress your Friends While Camping)
Created | Updated Feb 10, 2006
Welcome to Erik's Survival Guide.
Today's topic is how to build a good, tenable fire in an outdoors setting, with a minimum of preparation, time, or equipment. The first step is knowing how a good fire is made. Like a building, it needs construction. Remember the fire triangle whenever you need to build a flame. A 'fire triangle' is the three things that a fire needs- fuel, air, and heat. Without even one of these, any fire is doomed to fail.First, you need to select a place for the fire to go. This may be different from the location that you start the fire at, if you are a hardcore SOB who starts his fires over here and moves them over there*. Mostly you do this when you've had enough practice at it that you can set up all your fuels in a certain way so they take much more quickly, as opposed to having to spoon feed the flame. For now, we'll do this the simple way.
Location, Location, Location
Anyway, pick a spot. It shouldn't be too close to trees, dried grass, or any location where a spark could jump and light something on fire that you don't want burning. Keep it at least 15 feet from your shelter and 20 feet from any source of water. Clear the area of debris such as twigs, sticks, rocks, and other objects as best you can to approximately twice your body length (about 12 feet) in diameter. If you have a tool to do so, dig a very shallow curved pit between 6-12 inches deep and about 3 feet (1 meter) in width. You can make it deeper if you don't want the fire to be easily visible. Line the edges of the pit with rocks between a double fist and head sized, making a good circle to reflect the heat inwards. This is your fire pit. Having it dug deep will give the ash somewhere to settle, as well as reflect most of the heat back at the fire to make it even hotter. It really works, honest.
Fuels
Now, for fuels. A big rookie mistake is to start building your fire, then go running off for wood midway through the process. Gather at least four or five good double-armloads of fuel before you even get started, storing it somewhere dry and slightly elevated at least ten feet from where you want the fire to be. Fuel needs to run from 'starter tinder' in size to tinder to grass to twigs to sticks to branches to logs, in that order. Have a double handful of starter tinder and regular tinder on hand before you do anything else. Use whatever wood you can get your hands on. Light, airy wood takes flame faster than dense, heavy wood, though the harder stuff tends to give a good burn for longer. You can use slightly damp wood once you get past the 'kindling' stage, but it's essential for tinder and kindling to be as dry as possible.
Tinder
You'll want to start with tinder. Starter tinder is fine. Not 'Denise Richards' fine, but more in terms of texture and volume per weight. Think 'human hair' in size and you're getting on track. For the science geeks out there, the reason for this is that a pound of say, cotton fluff has hundreds of times more igniteable square surface space than, say, a one pound piece of wood. There is more air and more access to the air, as well. In the Northwestern US, beech and pine trees have bark that peels wonderfully into little bits of tinder. Dry pine needles work quite well also, as does 'goat's beard', green moss not uncommon around Ponderosa forests. There are many trees that have very fibrous compositions- you can take a knife or small hatchet and go to work on the tip of a twig, working it laterally until you've got what resembles a feather duster.
You need a ball of tinder about the size of a double fist, as a bare minimum. Like a pillow, fluff it up to absolutely maximize the airflow through it. Put your spark in the middle of this sucker and give it air, blowing very, very gently. Don't rush to smother it if you see smoke. Wait until you see a good, steady lick of flame before you do anything else. Now, add in more starter tinder if need be, the slower the better, followed by your secondary tinder. Secondary tinder is things like dried grass or pine needles, not as easy to ignite but ready to catch fire. Gradually, a bit at a time, add in twigs no larger than a pencil. A good rule to use is the arm method for graduation of fuel size- pinkie finger, handspan, fingertip to wrist, wrist to elbow, and so on, with nothing larger than an inch in diameter. Don't put on more than one fuel size every fifteen seconds, and upgrade fuel sizes about once every 90 seconds, if the fire's growing fairly steadily. Patience is definately a virtue in this case. Once you get a good, fairly steady flame, you can build up to sticks about a foot in length and several inches thick, and from there it's cake. If fuel is going to be a problem, don't overfeed the fire- it doesn't need to be a raging inferno.
Now, WATCH THE FIRE. Try to at least keep a small flame going, or embers, if you can. The smaller the flame gets, the harder it will be to get it going again. Fortunately, because you dug a pit, there will be plenty of hot coals at the bottom to play with. You may need to set up shifts with your buddies to cover it and make sure it doesn't go out at night, or just wake yourself up every hour or so and throw another log on. Aren't you glad you gathered wood before you went to sleep?
Of course, this now begs the question of what are you going to do without a lighter?
We'll begin with the most basic and primitive of methods- the friction start.
Starting a Fire from Scratch
Trying to start a fire without matches or a striking flint is difficult at best. This is the good old Boy Scout method that you always see in the movies. You'll want two pieces of wood, one fairly harder and than the other. One of the pieces needs to be a stick as straight as you can find, smooth, no more than an inch in diameter and around 14" in length (20-30 cm). You should be able to briskly roll it back and forth between your palms. The other piece needs to be a slightly softer piece at least an inch or two in diameter. A slightly rotted but dry piece of tree works well in this case. This will form both a place for the embers to land as well as a friction point for the top stick. The interior part of a piece of dried tree bark works wonders in this case, especially ponderosa pine or willow bark. Put a -very- dry, soft, and fine piece of tinder in a pile near them. Push the stick down, making sure not to crush the tinder, and begin briskly rubbing the tip of the stick into the bowl. Don't compress the tinder- the idea is to set it alight with the rubbing sticks, not grind it into powder. This is going to take a while to do, so stick with it. Once you get some browning and the smoke continue to rub, gently adding in more oxygen to get it hot. Don't stop now! Wait until you get some good blackish-brown coloration and wisps of smoke. Now, while blowing steadily but not too hard, add in the ultra fine tinder, like some dried grass or hair. Once it takes, begin adding the next size up, then the next. Once you get a steady flame, transfer the affair over to where you want the fire to actually be and save your striking surface for later use. Gradually build the fire up with larger and larger twigs, then sticks and branches. The slower, the better in this case. Rushing the fire can easily put it out. Try to use fairly dry wood, and the finer, the better for the earlier stages. I've never been able to get this method to work, personally, but I've seen it done with some success after much sweating and cursing. (Props to Skankyrich for nailing this one down for me).
Before We Go On, Let's Discuss What Fire You Need
Ok, there are actually a lot of fires you can make. When you're preparing for a fire, consider what you are going to use it for. Night-time warmth? Signalling? Spit-cooking or frying on a pan? Before you just start chucking flames around, have an idea on what you want to do with them.
The Tepee Fire
A quick and easy method. It consists of tinder in the center, lit or unlit (if you're lighting the tinder after building the frame for the fire, make sure to leave enough room to get your hand in there), surrounded by smaller kindling in various stages, and the wrist-sized logs arranged above the pile in a 'tepee' or conical fashion. When laying out your tinder and kindling, try to think of concentric circles burning outwards, so that by the time it reaches the edge of the inside circle, it'll be hot enough to light the logs themselves.
The Log Cabin
This is almost identical to the tepee fire in terms of layout. The main difference is that instead of stacking the logs in a cone around the kindling, they're stacked more around it via a log cabin. For those of you struggling with the mental image, put down two logs parallel to each other, just close enough that they both rest atop the tinder (around 6 inches or 15 cm is a good distance). Take two more wrist-sized logs and put them parallel each other on top of the ends of the other pair. Continue on until you've got about four or five little logs stacked thusly atop one another. This makes a great base to rest a cooking tin upon, as it supports the tin while getting it pretty hot.
The Dakota Pit
An old Army Ranger taught me this one. Find yourself a small pile of dirt about 3 ft (1 meter) high and wide. Burrow a hole slightly angled down into the pile of dirt, at least a foot or two down (30-60 cm) and about that wide, widening out towards the base. Now, dig a hole upwards of around the same size, coming out the top of the mound. At the bottom of this little pit you'll put your fire. The nifty thing about this is that it's hot enough at the top that you can at least smoke your food, if not cook it outright, while the pit hides the light of your fire without taking away the heat from it. This works really well if you've got a small shelter, letting warm air circulate without risking a lot of sparks and embers.
The Emergency Shelter Fire
This is a useful trick if ever you find yourself needing a quickie emergency heat source. Set up a good roaring fire, as usual, but behind it drag two or three good sized logs and stack them up to about knee height, about a good body's length) away from the fire. Get yourself a comfortable distance from the fire and lay down, near to the wood. This makes a mirror that reflects the heat of the fire.
The Trench Fire
This works great for cooking slightly larger game animals, or if you want to make a fire that'll burn for a long time. Scoop out a trench around a body's height in length and as wide as your forearm and a handspan deep. At one end dig out a bowl-shaped depression- this is where you'll make your starting fire. Now, moving from the bowl to the end of the fire, lay out wrist-sized logs in a roughly hatch-shaped pattern, making sure that the logs towards the start point are beneaht logs furthur away. It works best to put only the ends of the logs on the dirt rim, so that when the center burns through they'll naturally fall to the bottom and turn into embers. On top of these you can put your hearth logs, the big thick 'uns, once the fire gets hot. Lining the bottom of the trench with kindling and lighting it in various places makes the fire hotter in a more uniform fashion, and works best for spit-cooking large game or warming a number of people up at once. This fire works very well if you can't take turns making sure it stays up all night, as if it's set up properly will slowly burn through the night as it eats its way along the trail of fuel.
Now for the Fun
Ok, now on to easier and more fun ways to do it. One of the most tried and true methods is with a magnesium firestarter, standard issue in almost every survival bag that you may go down with. It's a simple metal block with a thin strip of magnesium atop it. Slice along the magnesium strip with a good knife and watch the sparks fly. The main trick is to get it as close to your tinder as humanly possible. Don't worry about getting singed.
Other nifty tricks include using the lens from a thick pair of glasses or windshield to focus the light. This may take a while, and in some cases you can't get a good enough refraction index to make it work. The best bet is to do it with a very thickly curved piece of glass at high sun during the day. One of our own field researchers claims that sugar and potassium maganate, along with a few drops of water, can produce a good little flame with a minimum effort. An alternative method is to stretch a thick coil of steel wool over the terminals of a pair of good-sized batteries. It'll get hot enough to light tinder, easily. A similar and much more dangerous method is next.
Another method, not attempted by the author, is to (WARNING: DO THIS CAREFULLY. IN FACT, IT'S NOT EVEN GOING TO PUT THIS UP HERE. LOOK DOWN BELOW IF YOU'RE REALLY CURIOUS. IT IS NIFTY. JUST DANGEROUS. LIKE THAT'S GONNA STOP YOU, RIGHT?)
The other and best way to start a fire is to use accelerants. When one say accelerants, one means of course anything petrol. Do NOT use anything that is a flammable vapour, such as gasoline or aerosol spray. This researcher once watched two guys pour five gallons of gasoline on a bonfire to light it, and when they did it instantly became about a 200lb bomb. If these are your ONLY options, than use only a few drops in a single spot and throw the match at it, just to ignite the gasoline enough for a flame.
One of the best tricks is to soak Vaseline into cotton swabs. These will burn for a good five minutes at a nice temperature, no matter what weather conditions, and is more than enough to get a small fire going. Other options are JP-4 jet fuel, vegetable oil, what have you. There are a wide number of combustible products out there on the shelves for very cheap, designed specifically for emergency firestarting situations.
Tricks for Inclement Weather
This is where you separate the sparks from the bonfires. I'll tell you right now, starting fires in less than ideal weather is hard. A strong wind will ruin your little flame's desperate attempts at life, and good luck getting soggy kindling to take light. Especially dry areas can go up like a powderkeg with one careless spark. However, there are a few tricks you can use. If you're in a windy area, try setting up at the leeside of the hill, opposite the wind. Look for low ground, and set up rocks, logs, whatever you can find to shelter the fire. Digging a little hole in the ground does wonders for this. In snow, it's important to keep away from the snow and ice so that it doesn't melt and put out the fire. Don't set up underneath snow-laden trees, or in shallow depressions water can easily flow into.
There are several recourses one can use in wet weather. One is to carry around your tinder in a pocket or between layers of clothing for a while, which dries it out enough that you can occasionally get a light out of it. There are several kinds of trees that produce relatively waterproof bark that you can rip off and use, and pine needles beneath their trees work wonderfully. If your clothing isn't soaked through, you can work a few threads out or cut a patch and unravel it. Hair works well for this purpose, too. Tree and ground moss is excellent for this, as you can carry it in your pocket and dry it out in a few hours.
MOST IMPORTANTLY
Well, that should about do it. Above all else, be careful with fire. Here in the states, millions of acres of trees burn every year becuase some idiot forgot to put out his fire. Make sure that all the embers are dead, not smoking or warm to the touch. Dig up the earth under and around the coals, feeling it as well and turning it over until everything is thorougly put out. Lots of water should be used during this whole process, as embers can sometimes burn slowly for months under the dirt. Here are some helpful links to look at in terms of fire building. There's a lot of duplicate material on here, or so it seems. Everyone's got their own methodology. This reasearcher has met people who couldn't light a cigarette with a blowtorch and met folks who were able to light a wet newspaper in a snowstorm with a soggy matchbook.
A799383 - Making a Tepee Fire
A784091 - The Bow Drill - Fire Without Matches! - This link is one of the best and most effective methods of of starting a fire sans igniter equipment, and is extremely well put together.
*As a quick reference to the pre-fire buildup, this is a somewhat more advanced trick. It's possible to set up all of your fuels before the fire even starts. Drop a pile of pencil-sized sticks into a circle about a handspan in diameter and a few inches high. Over these, put down secondary tinder such as pine needles or dried grasses. Atop that, (later), you will put down your tinder, presumably afire as you're a hardcore kinda guy who plays with fire away from the pit. Now, take your forearm sized logs and stack them around and above -but not on! -the starter base. You can either create a log cabin (no bigger than a 12" square) or a tepee shape, again, no more than 8" above the starting flame. This will light up like a flare when it takes and is a great way to impress the neighbors, or give someone a job to do while you're doing the cool 'I'm f***ing MacGuyver and can make fire!' trick. Once the tepee or log cabin is built, put your tinder down on the starter pile and watch it fly.
**Take a starter battery from your car or airplane. Secure a piece of wire to the negative lead on the battery, and place the wire in the center of your mass of tinder. Making very certain not to touch the first wire, secure a second wire to the positive lead. Using some kind of insulation to hold the positive wire, (it gets hot) gently brush it over the negative wire and try to encourage a spark. If you have wires with frayed ends, use them, because the more arcs you get the better chance of ignition there is. Be careful as the metal can get VERY hot VERY quickly because of the amperage of the battery, and the battery itself will quickly overheat and explode. This is NOT A FIRST RESORT METHOD. You can try it only if and after everything else fails.
