Much like Prometheus, my mission in this article is to help you with the secret of fire. Whether you are hunting, making s’mores in your backyard, or suddenly find yourself in a survival situation, basic fire skills are crucial. With a little knowledge and practice, you’ll be making fire like a pro. Thankfully, using the ‘Rule of Threes,’ you can easily remember this knowledge.
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First, fires have three necessary components:
- Oxygen
- Heat
- Fuel
Without just one of these three critical building blocks, you will never make a fire burn. If you find yourself struggling to light a fire or keep it lit, you can usually diagnose the problem by looking at these three important ingredients.
The way fires burn can also be a clue that helps you prepare for success. Fires burn up. This is a universal law. Consider a lit match: if you strike it and let it burn with the head pointed up, it will slowly burn toward your fingers. However, strike the match and hold the head toward the ground, and you’ve aligned the fire better with its fuel source and it will move more quickly and burn your fingers.
There is no better example of this than wildfires: the blaze will creep down hills, but it will absolutely run up them. Keeping in mind this idea, we can stack the fuel, and odds, in our favor.
The three stages of fire building are preparation, ignition, and maintenance. If you’re moving through the woods, keep a sharp eye out for good tinder. Gather it as you see it and take it with you.
Next, pick a good location that will aid you in controlling your fire. A rock ring or pit is great but you may have to make them. Don’t start a fire under a low hanging branch or near some other fuel source if you can avoid it.
Clear the area of fuel as best you can. It is very important that you gather all the needed materials to begin with before you start. Have them on hand and ready to go before you start the fire. Next, light your fire.
Be prepared to add fuels and oxygen as needed, this may require a lot of blowing. Finally, once the fire is going, keep feeding it and adjusting the fuels for optimal burning. Successful, sustainable, fire is built from small to large. You cannot take a lighter and set a large log ablaze, so start small. I use the Rule of Threes to break down my fuel, too.
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| (Photo courtesy Sean Curtis) |
1. Gather Tinder: Tinder is the substance we start fires with. These things are usually quite small and burn quickly. Tinder can be different in various areas of the country. For example, in the mountains of Colorado I have used dried grasses, pine needles, and cattail dander to start fires.
2. Make a Tinder Bundle: One of the most critical forms of tinder is the tinder bundle. Make a good group of your grasses and pine needles big enough to fill both hands. Place the most combustible item in the middle. In the picture you can see how I have already begun to pull the dander from the cattail. I placed all of this in the middle of the tinder bundle.
3. Lighting: I then folded the bundle together, taco-like, in order to have the flames catch and ignite the rest of the bundle. Once it was going well, I placed the lit bundle in my fire ring and began to feed it the smallest sized fuels.
Fuels
Fuels come in roughly three basic sizes — finger-sized, wrist-sized, and bicep or bigger sized. I slowly fed the fire small twigs at first, letting the flames catch on the twigs before I moved to larger fuels. Using this process you can patiently create a good-sized fire.
Troubleshooting
I had a hard time getting the fire pictured above going. It had rained in the mountains all night before I arrived. I searched for dry fuels, but had mostly moist fuels to work with. This is not insurmountable. Once I had a flame going and was trying to get the small fuel to start, I kept adding more and more pine needles.
This is where heat comes into play. After a while, the continued heat produced by the pine needles dried out the small fuels and allowed me to move to larger fuels. Selection of fuels is critical. Look for tinder under trees or rocks that would be protected from the rain. Snap off branches from dead trees that were off the wet ground.
Another potential problem is having your fuels collapse. This can cause the fire to starve for oxygen and ultimately snuff out. Adjust your fuels using a stick. Build a teepee-style structured fire. The wide base allows oxygen in at the bottom, and directs the flame continually to the fuels at the top. You may need to blow to keep things going at first. With this fire, I eventually knew I had won when I saw coals forming at the bottom. Coals equal heat, and can be blown on and stoked with fuel to keep a fire going.
Keep in mind that a fire can be a life saver. Fire can boost morale, give you security, light, and heat. You can prepare food with it, and survive extreme temperatures. You can drop green wood fuels in a fire to make a great deal of smoke as a means of signaling for help. Of all the survival skills, fire building is one of the most important.
