Failed to light fire - Tips needed!

[Geoffrey_Bubbles]

Hi all, haven't been on here for ages, just been so much going on and had a bit of turmoil, but hey ho, life goes on...

Since I was last on here I have been down to Blackberry Woods campsite near Ditchling. I know its been mentioned on here a few times and I can confirm its a great little site, though I thought it was a bit pricey the way they charge £5 per person AND £5 per tent regardless of size per night, but none-the-less me and my mate had a few nights 'comfort' camping and just chilling.

On the first night it had been dry all day and we bought a small sack of rather expensive firewood off Tim and had a good fire going which lasted all evening.

HOWEVER, (shock, gasp, horror and much to my disappointment and embarassment) on the second night, failed quite miserably to get one going.

Now, the wood had been dry the previous day and had been put in the tent porch on a plastic sheet to keep the rain off it (cos it rained a LOT the second day). When we returned to the camp damp and cool it had actually stopped raining and we wanted to get fire going. Using tinder and either a firestick or matches we got a good steady flame no problem and made sure it was off the damp ground, but putting further small splinters of wood on, just killed the flame. We spent a good hour trying different things to get it going, but to no avail.

I did notice that despite keeping the wood covered, it felt slightly damp to the touch, even when split down and extracted from the centre.

Was it simply a lost cause? Can anyone suggest things we should fo tried. I was quite suprised when it failed miserably to get going. We used maya dust, tissue paper, and some of the previous nights charcoal to get it initially started. As soon as we put any further wood near it it would disappear (though with a bit of persuasion and blowing, would often pop back into life).

Any tips appreciated.

Cheers in advance

Geoff the not so happy camper...

 

[leroy]

i found a while back i had the same sounding problem (had lots of problems initially getting embers to catch ended up using some fluff from the heels of our socks), but when wondered what was going on we felt that the air in general was a little damp/humid. we just collecteded loads of fire wood and stacked it close to the struggling fire to try and dry it out (also found that splitting the wood helped a little).

 

[Abbe Osram]

Often when it’s raining the air pressure sucks and there is not much wind blowing.
So see that you don’t block with your body the airflow!
Get the fire from the ground so air is able to get under the fire!
Sometimes when it has rained a hell of a lot even the dead dry standing branches are wet. What you can do it to take alive birch twigs, but use lots and lots of them.
They have to lie in length all very nicely; don’t throw little twigs like a pile over each other. The fire will start with a hell of a lot smoke but will warm up and push the water out of the living birch twigs. There is sometimes more water in former bone dried branches than there is water in the living twigs of the birch tree after a lot of rain. The birch bark is so tight that the rain doesn’t enter the twigs. So you are better off using a lot of them. The idea is that the warmth of the little fire will push out the water, after a while the heat is so strong that the twigs will burn nicely.

One very important point is, don’t play around with the fire or you destroy the heat build up. Start the fire, don’t block the air and let it work. If the distances of the twiggs are too big you might have to press down the pile so the heat will build up better. If you do that watch that you don’t block the wind direction.
After you have the fire going, you can put living cut birch branches onto the fire,
BUT don’t throw them onto the red ember, you will kill it, there has to be air between the log and the embers. Put one end of the log into the fire and the other end on a stone.

Off course you will have to test and see how wet are the dead standing branches on the trees. See if you can cut away the wet stuff. My technique you can resort to if you see that everything is really wet.

Hope that helps you a little.
Cheers
Abbe

Remember don’t poke around in the fire, let it alone building up heat!

 

[pierre girard]

Hard to respond because I don't know what you have for woods around.

Here, if it's been raining, I go in close standing spruce or balsam and pick off the dead twigs near the base of the tree. Even if these are damp they will go. I once won five dollars starting a fire in this way on the Olympic Nat'l (rain) forest in Washington State. It took awhile, but it was a great fire once it got going.

Even if these small evergreen twigs are wet right through, continued exposure to the small flame from your tinder will eventually dry them enough to get a fire started. If you've gathered enough twigs, and split some of your firewood into kindling - the kindiling will catch.

A large stash of birchbark never hurt anything when it comes to firemaking either.

 

[Goose]

All the advice seems good, especially birch bark, if you are looking for some "cheats" however.....

I find cooking oil is excellent to get a fire going, it burns for a while giving the wood a chance to dry out, however you need tinder going to get the oil burning. It works really well if you the fire needs a kickstart, nearly burnt out and new wood needs to go on.

Candles or nightlights are good too, if you have no/wet tinder.

Hand cleaning gel can work as tinder too, will even take a spark from a ferro rod.

Rubber, from an inner tube, can make a decent tinder. Obviously use sparingly, set fire to a car tyre and there will be black choking smoke, good to have around your tinder box as wet alternative.

I think it goes without saying DON'T USE PETROL, the fumes burn not the liquid and flames can jump quite a distance!!! And besides it is crap to get a fire going, it seems the flames go around other fuel, not really drying or heating the wood.

 

[Nemisis]

I never thought of using cooking oil nice one Goose. I wonder if a tablespoon full or so in a nightlight base with cotton string as a wick would work? I'll have to give it a try.
Dave.

 

[Neanderthal]

It rained on the Saturday night on the Spring North meet but on Sunday morning Fishaben managed to get a fire started with birchbark and a spark. Small dead birch twigs caught up in the branches were used as kindling. The twigs hanging vertically were dry enough to get things going. I remember thinking while collecting twigs "should have done this yesterday when it was dry and put them in a bin liner".

 

[leon-1]

Make feather sticks using the heart wood of (wood in the middle) your dry?? wood. Use fine featherings first, progressing to heavier and heavier ones and then onto actual sticks.

When you place them on the fire place them on upside down so that the featherings are just above your intial flame the heat will burn up through and start to dry things out as they go. You will require quite a large supply to start off with just to get the heat up, but after a while things will go quite nicely.

 

[pierre girard]

All the advice seems good, especially birch bark, if you are looking for some "cheats" however.....

I find cooking oil is excellent to get a fire going, it burns for a while giving the wood a chance to dry out, however you need tinder going to get the oil burning. It works really well if you the fire needs a kickstart, nearly burnt out and new wood needs to go on.

Candles or nightlights are good too, if you have no/wet tinder.

.

Just remembered something. When hiking in the mountains in Washington state, Oregon, and SE Alaska (NW coast is very wet), we used to bundle newspaper into small tight bunches, and soak it in hot wax. When it dried, we'd take a few bundles on hikes for starting fires. Worked very well.

 

[Ogri the trog]

Goeff, theres been some great advice so far, to which I'd like to add;
Use a chimnea, anything to get the air moving through the fire. A cardboard tube, something like a "Pringles" tube, either raised off the floor or with a few holes cut into the bottom. Any heat inside will cause an updraught to help drive any moisture out of potentially damp tinder/kindling.
Your fire wood would have absorbed dampness out of the air and as such the outer layers would be more wet than the inner cores of each stick - so don't be affraid to split your wood down to smaller pieces, use the dryer inner bits to get your fire established and then introduce the damp stuff once there is suffiecent heat to cope with it.

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[william#]

really never thought of cooking oil
wow
used that one for years goes up a treat
lived in a cottage for a few years and was very good as there was no heating (only that which came from the open fire and coal burning aga ) yu get pretty wise to getting a fire going quick and following no particular rules ie yu just get it going as quick as yu can .
crushing up tea lights was another favourite as the y crumble into dust in your fingers .
little cheat i would do when we were taking groups of young people out - some times you would get given the job of having a fairly large fire ready to light when the group got off night walk - now you got 20 teenagers or adults or both you really want to have the fire start first time so as well as building the fire right i would also add a little chemical help to .
i mean im all into being the purest but faced with a scrutinizing group or being cold i opt to cheat every time
hehehehehehehe

 

[Goose]

really never thought of cooking oil
wow
used that one for years goes up a treat
lived in a cottage for a few years and was very good as there was no heating (only that which came from the open fire and coal burning aga ) yu get pretty wise to getting a fire going quick and following no particular rules ie yu just get it going as quick as yu can .
crushing up tea lights was another favourite as the y crumble into dust in your fingers .
little cheat i would do when we were taking groups of young people out - some times you would get given the job of having a fairly large fire ready to light when the group got off night walk - now you got 20 teenagers or adults or both you really want to have the fire start first time so as well as building the fire right i would also add a little chemical help to .
i mean im all into being the purest but faced with a scrutinizing group or being cold i opt to cheat every time
hehehehehehehe

Me too!
A good one for a campfire is to prepare it well, with a bit of chemical help, and start it with a switch . A battery, a length of wire into some fine wire wool, under a chemical(meths usually) soaked tinder and voila!

 

[Geoffrey_Bubbles]

Cheers peeps, plenty of tips there to try.

I think it was made worse by the fact that my mate has never really camped out before and I get the impression he thought I was some kind of Ray Mears expert, so when I couldn't get it going it was more the look of disappointment on his face!

Never tried making feather sticks, my knife control isn't very good, but I do have a frosts mora which I was using to shave small slighters of wood off split down trunks to try to get some tinder, but they all felt damp to the touch.

I had what I thought was quite a good sustainable flame going (with man made tinders), but it obviously wasn't hot enough, as soon as I got any real wood near it, it died right down to an ember and if not encouraged with a bit of puff would disappear completey and need relighting again. Though a bit of puff and whoosh came the flame again whcih I thought was a good indication of the heat withing, but hey ho.

Any tips for getting at the dryest wood in the centre of a trunk (most of these were about 4-6inchs in diameter). I was using a Gerber axe which seems to be a pretty general use thing, but I wasn't very accurate in my splitting and I was worried about doing myself an injury! Then when I got something small enough and attacked it with the mora, I found it very hard to cut the way I wanted, if that makes any sense! It was hard to maintain a good long straight cut, but again, maybe I was too worried about my fingers to really put any effort into it!

Anyway, cheers for you help. Will have to practice a bit in the garden!

Geoff

 

[ilan]

I think the problem is down to volume to light a fire in damp wet conditions you need to get a larger amount of tinder alight as it will need to drive any moisture out of the wood before it even starts to char or as others have suggested using somthing that will burn for a longer period . Try to find wood that has been hung up in the trees small twigs etc anything bigger than a match stick can be split with a knife keep to 4-6 ins long keeping the fire off the wet ground using a platform of thick sticks . If its raining i use a plastic carrier bag as a sort of tent . Best to practice in the garden

 

[william#]

try lighting as many fires as you can this year its the best way to learn - as you basicly get a real feel for it
i got a mate who teaches fire lighting and his skills of fire building far outstretch mine - but - as i spent several years having to light a fire for around 7mths every day each year i got to know how to read how the fire is going what its going to do and what it needs to get it how i want - no skill just dumb old repitition - which knocked a bit of knowing into me
lol

 

[BobFromHolland]

I think fire is just like money:

money makes money and heat makes heat. It's just a matter of heat-volume (I agree with ilan). In my humble opinion the trick is to get enough embers from your tinder to sustain a nicely warm updraft that will dry and start the rest of your wood. The amount of necessary embers are varying with weather conditions.