Featherstick technique

[ColdCanuck]

In my experience "feather sticks" are only used to get a fire going. Even then if you have good conditions and good wood you won't need them. Where I've seen "feather sticks" really shine is when you've got crappy wood and poor conditions for a fire. The idea behind a "feather sticks" is that to make fire you need 3 things fuel, heat, and oxygen. What a "feather stick" does for you is increases the rate that oxygen can combine with the fuel by a factor of many percent. Every feather doubles the surface area, so on a "feather stick" you will have many times the surface area. The stick part of the "feather sticks" holds the feathers apart so that oxygen can get to them. So when you've got bad wood and bad conditions your fire initially won't generate enough heat to combust the less than ideal material. A "feather sticks" allows the heat to build up quicker so you can burn the rest of your less than ideal fuel. The really important part of making "feather sticks" is to get feathers. In my experience, It doesn't matter if they are pretty and nicely curled. The important part is to increase the surface area of the wood .... that will get your fire going.

 

[Justin Time]

One of the things I found in Norway is that lighting a fire using standard british skills doesnt work very well - wood that is frozen to the core doesnt burn easy and as such a successful technique here doesnt work there.

Gary
How do they do it? Not that I'm likely to be faced with these conditions soon but...

 

[Gary]

Justin one of the ways I found to work best was to burrow under spruce trees and use all the little dead branches still attached to the tree, not as easy as it sounds due to the snow but it worked. A similar principle to Mors Kochanski stick bundles.

Once the fire is going you can add bigger stuff and use the fire to dry wood for your next fire ect ect.

Another thing that we started to do automatically was to prepare out next fire well in advance, carry birch bark (thick strips) next to our bodies to keep them warm so when we needed to light it we had the fixings on us.

Selection of wood is an art out there mind you, as covered in snow you are sometimes hard pressed to tell a dead tree from a live one! Look for spruces where the wood has turned grey - that burns really well.

But again practise makes perfect, and all the theory in the world wont help you, the 3 day rule seemed to come into play again also - i.e after three days we'd adjusted MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY to the situation and became comfortable and after the first 3 days I think I could happily have lived out there indefinately.

 

[Justin Time]

cheers Gary

 

[george]

IMO One of the times I've found when feather sticks can be really useful in UK conditions is when you're working in really damp/wet conditions with the rain coming down hard and fast. If you dont use feather sticks then as you carve off a pile of small shavings or splinters you need to pick each one up as it's produced and put it away out of the wet. They have a tendancy to fall on the ground anyway and pick up damp that doesn't help when you try to get the fire started. If you use feather sticks then the splinters never touch the ground, as you produce each stick you tuck them out the rain inside your jacket. By the time you've produced 4 or 5 ready to start the fire the first ones are still dry and the whole thing goes more easily.

Just my opinion, but I use them if it's wet and otherwise don't bother.

George