was in yonder woodland today having a lil fire which i started using cotton wool and i got it going an all my wood was wet (proud moment) which got me thinking where wud i be without cotton wool, so i thought charcloth but if then i thought more, what could i do to get a fire started in a wet woodland at this time of year when there are no fluffy cotton like seeds floating around and all ive got is a flint steel?? and the woods i was in had no birch or anything realy, no fungus, jus alot of well...wet and wood
wet fires
- Thread starter Backyard Bushcraft
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I know the feeling, but fortuantly, the place where i go is abundant in silver birch. I think the best way would be rub some woods to help dry it off, and wait for it to dry completely.Backyard Bushcraft said:
there must be some secret of the woods im missin surel cat be rubbing wood till its dry it look like a madman, noticed a few dead logs, and ive heard of using old fire dogs that will catch with a spark has this any truth to it?
Try picking some hanging dead branches, they are off the ground so are not soaked through. Then make feather sticks with them, you get to the dry wood in the middle. Make lots,and lots, of feather sticks and use them to dry out the next lot of sticks. You can, though it isn't easy, make a couple of very fine feather sticks to take a spark with a firesteel(ferro rod!). The real trick is preparation, prepare twice as many feathersticks and dry twigs as you think you need then double the amount!!
You know about the fire triangle?
You need fuel, oxygen and heat to make fire. Fuel isn't usually a problem, Oxygen is always around, the really rare resource is heat!
When using wet or damp wood the heat gets used up turning the water to steam rather tahn heating up the next piece of fuel, so more heat is needed to keep the fire going.
Treat the heat as a resource and think about the relative surface area of the fuel. The more surface area there is the easier and more efficiently the heat is transferred, making feather sticks,or shavings, gives you more surface area to work with. It also dries out quicker, a towel left in a heap won't dry out but draped over a rail or line, giving it more surface area, it can dry out pretty quick.
I am probably teaching you to suck eggs a little, used to teaching this to scouts and absolute beginners
, but the important points are SURFACE AREA!! and HEAT is your most precious resource!
You know about the fire triangle?
You need fuel, oxygen and heat to make fire. Fuel isn't usually a problem, Oxygen is always around, the really rare resource is heat!
When using wet or damp wood the heat gets used up turning the water to steam rather tahn heating up the next piece of fuel, so more heat is needed to keep the fire going.
Treat the heat as a resource and think about the relative surface area of the fuel. The more surface area there is the easier and more efficiently the heat is transferred, making feather sticks,or shavings, gives you more surface area to work with. It also dries out quicker, a towel left in a heap won't dry out but draped over a rail or line, giving it more surface area, it can dry out pretty quick.
I am probably teaching you to suck eggs a little, used to teaching this to scouts and absolute beginners
, but the important points are SURFACE AREA!! and HEAT is your most precious resource! 
Backyard Bushcraft said:
Well, its possible that you can actully be in a situation that you can't solve. That being said, I dont think a bit of wet would stop you.
You have a few choices if you have the basic cutting tools with you.
1: Carry a pencil shapener fixed to your sheath. Cut some standing dead wood and split it. Split off a small piece about as thick as a pencil, roughly shape it to fit in the sharpener and make as much tinder as you like.
2: Split a log cut with a saw, if you dont have a saw, there is a good chance you can find some standing deadwood thin enough to snap with some leverage.
Make a wedge from a branch
Batton the blade into the log for splitting only as deep as the blade.
Use the wedge to split the log
Shave some tinder (or just use the pencil sharpener if you are not skilled enough yet) and make some kindling
Gather it all together and watch the video!
VIDEO
It's perfectly possible to shave VERY FINE feather sticks and use sparks from your swedish firesteel or matches. You must have a VERY SHARP knife and make long fine curls using split wood which you can find even if it's been peeing down and should be dry in the middle once split. Once you've got this going add some larger curled feather sticks and grade up with twigs hanging from trees up until you're burning large fuel. By this time the fire should have the strength to burn off any moisture from large fuel. As with many skills in Bushcraft practice as much as you can to become proficient and don't wait until you need the skill to find you can't do it. Pick a day and make it a 'Today I'm going to learn to split wood and shave very fine feather sticks day' sharpen your knife till it's razor and by the end of the day you should be shaving 'horse hair' thickness curls. Cotton wool soaked in vaseline, char cloth, wetfire tinder are good for when you just need a fire fast, but for me, nothing beats using as few man made materials as possible. Not always possible though.
Thank you Simon E, I've been looking for something like that for ages :You_Rock_ . I'm in the same position as you Backyard Bushcraft, my locale woods have hardy any birch and no usable bracket fungi so being able to make fire without cotton-wool would be brilliant. I'll have to get practicing .
.my little brother is now minus one pencil sharpener ha ha ha cheers i know wot im doing tomorrow !!!!!
My last two camping trips were pretty damp. And since there was so much greenery, the condensation was intense, even in the sun. I found that when firewood is that wet and there is so much moisture in the air, a LOT of dry kindling is needed to dry out the firewood. It seemed like I had to add kindling to the fire every time before I put some fire wood on. And a roaring blaze would put itself out within 15-20 minutes if left untended even on a red hot bed of coals.
Splitting helped, but for me, fatwood was invaluable!
Getting a fire started to the point in the video is no problem, even in the damp. Keeping it going long enough to dry out the very wet wood was a problem.
How do you guys keep your fire wood dry in a really wet and humid environment? I kept my pile stacked right next to the fire in the fire pit and it was still damp. The wood boiled before it burned.
Splitting helped, but for me, fatwood was invaluable!
Getting a fire started to the point in the video is no problem, even in the damp. Keeping it going long enough to dry out the very wet wood was a problem.
How do you guys keep your fire wood dry in a really wet and humid environment? I kept my pile stacked right next to the fire in the fire pit and it was still damp. The wood boiled before it burned.
Well you wouldnt start the fire until you are properly prepared, meaning (for me at least) enough wood for 4+ hours of heat/light/cooking with a bit in reserve for the A.M so you dont have to make your creaking bones work too hard to gather fuel before coffee
As for drying wood to prep it for buring.
Lay in near the fire on a raised platform to allow wind and heat to circulate.
Or
Build a frame over the fire (1m+) and place the wet wood on that. it wont get in that much of the way to make too much smoke and it will dry in short order, just make sure you rotate it like a Kebab. Since most of the convection heat from a fire is lost straight up into the air anyway, you are not sacrificing anything.
As for drying wood to prep it for buring.
Lay in near the fire on a raised platform to allow wind and heat to circulate.
Or
Build a frame over the fire (1m+) and place the wet wood on that. it wont get in that much of the way to make too much smoke and it will dry in short order, just make sure you rotate it like a Kebab. Since most of the convection heat from a fire is lost straight up into the air anyway, you are not sacrificing anything.
Backyard Bushcraft said:
I think that your prospects for lighting a fire in wet woodland and just a fire steel are possibly good - if you put the fire steel to one side! Friction fire lighting can dry out your starting materials and give you a glowing coal. Then you need a tinder that can cope with damp (not wet) materials. If too wet then you can use body heat to dry it out more. After that use a larger than usual volume of kindling - either tiny twigs or wood shavings or both. That will dry you next size wood and so on.
To mke my fire starter I would for preference put together a hand drill - made of an elder drill (dead one year old shoots can be found on many elder bushes) and a hearth board made from a piece of unrotted wood from a variety of trees. But if you have the materials then a bow drill may be more successful.
Oh, and take you materials out of the woodland so that there is less humidity.
Have I succeeded in wet woodland? Not yet with found materials, but I live in hope.
As the scout say be prepared ! take your tinder with you. One trick is to tie a small length of old fashioned sisal string to the handle of your fire steel If not then often fluff from your pockets can be used if not try holding your sharp knife at 90 to a piece of material/ or the inside of dry wood and scrape of some fine shavings dont start your fire on wet ground but on a platform of split wood to stop the heat drawing out the dampness from the ground . Only use twigs ect that have been found off the ground and even then split them . As said before its all about putting energy in The thicker wetter the wood is the more energy it requires
Won't a piece of rubber burn hot enough to start damp wood? I'm not adverse to a drop of meths - on the sticks - myself.
So stacking or propping the damp wood right next to the fire isn't good enough? I didn't think of a makeshift platform. The wood was partially off the ground and close enough to the fire that the lower pieces actually started to smolder. After hours of that, the wood actually got even more damp...there was no rain, but so much moisture in the air. After that trip, I bought a small cheap tarp to cover the wood pile with in the future to keep the condensation off of it.
What do you think? Wood raised off the ground, piled next to the fire, with a tarp to keep moisture off. If that doesn't work, I don't know what else to do.
This spot where we have been family camping is extremely moist. Even the inside of our tents have condensation forming. Fortunately the rain fly covers most of the tent, but anything that isn't covered gets massive condensation.
What surprised me the most was the dry wood (and everything else) getting more damp in the afternoon sun. It has got to be the dampest, non-rainy place I have camped in.
What do you think? Wood raised off the ground, piled next to the fire, with a tarp to keep moisture off. If that doesn't work, I don't know what else to do.
This spot where we have been family camping is extremely moist. Even the inside of our tents have condensation forming. Fortunately the rain fly covers most of the tent, but anything that isn't covered gets massive condensation.
What surprised me the most was the dry wood (and everything else) getting more damp in the afternoon sun. It has got to be the dampest, non-rainy place I have camped in.
I always carry tinder with me whenever I am out and about. I have dried bark that I have used before and know will take a spark or ember and will flame. I carry cotton with vaseline. I carry a length of jute cord that shreds up really nicely to take a spark. I also have the Sparklite tinder quick, a couple of Wetfire cubes and a few pieces of fatwood. Combined with a ferro rod as well as a lighter, starting a fire has never been a problem.
Some parts of Hawaii can be very humid and moist and that moisture can put out a fire if it is left untended pretty quickly. It happened to me. I had a nice roaring fire going and step away to do somethiing with my kids. No one else tended the fire. 15 minutes later, the fire was out. There was a bed of red hot coals and wood sitting on the coals, but the fire was out.
Funny thing is I had prepared and actually brought my own fire wood as I was unfamiliar with some of the trees where we were camping and I didn't want to cook with anything poisonous. So I bought a knee high bundle of kindling and three knee high bundles of fire wood. The wood in each bundle was between 2-3 feet long. I brought my axe to chop and split as needed.
For that damp area, I realized I probably needed 2-3 bundles of kindling or to have checked with Simon ahead of time. Next time I go there, I will have a platform off the ground next to the fire for the firewood to sit on with a tarp over the whole mess.
That was the amount needed for us to have a fire from the afternoon until about midnight.
Some parts of Hawaii can be very humid and moist and that moisture can put out a fire if it is left untended pretty quickly. It happened to me. I had a nice roaring fire going and step away to do somethiing with my kids. No one else tended the fire. 15 minutes later, the fire was out. There was a bed of red hot coals and wood sitting on the coals, but the fire was out.
Funny thing is I had prepared and actually brought my own fire wood as I was unfamiliar with some of the trees where we were camping and I didn't want to cook with anything poisonous. So I bought a knee high bundle of kindling and three knee high bundles of fire wood. The wood in each bundle was between 2-3 feet long. I brought my axe to chop and split as needed.
For that damp area, I realized I probably needed 2-3 bundles of kindling or to have checked with Simon ahead of time. Next time I go there, I will have a platform off the ground next to the fire for the firewood to sit on with a tarp over the whole mess.
That was the amount needed for us to have a fire from the afternoon until about midnight.
Hanzo,
I really dont know the conditions, but taking if off the floor and allowing air to pass through can only help. I would keep the tarp, but have it slightly raised if possible to dry out any condensation that might result from the wood drying in warmer weather.
I was out yesterday on a riverbank looking at Herons and some other wading bird. I had a fair sized fire for one person as it was monkeys cold, and even with the gale like winds there was a lot of heat. I have no doubt that a well vented platform about 1m from the coals would dry out in no time at all without being a pain to sit or cook near.
Happy New Year all!
I really dont know the conditions, but taking if off the floor and allowing air to pass through can only help. I would keep the tarp, but have it slightly raised if possible to dry out any condensation that might result from the wood drying in warmer weather.
I was out yesterday on a riverbank looking at Herons and some other wading bird. I had a fair sized fire for one person as it was monkeys cold, and even with the gale like winds there was a lot of heat. I have no doubt that a well vented platform about 1m from the coals would dry out in no time at all without being a pain to sit or cook near.
Happy New Year all!
