Fire Building Lesson 4

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Wet Conditions:

It has been raining and everything is wet from the rain. You need to get a fire going but how? You will still need to find the basics for fire building, tinder, kindling and wood. You will need much more tinder and kindling to get wet wood to burn. Typically you will need three to four times more of the tinder and kindling.

Your search to find drier tinder and kindling should focus under things. Look under pine trees and their canopy will shed the water to the edge of their branch line and keep much of the needles dry near the trunk. Brush wet leaves aside or move downed branches as what is underneath may be drier. If you have fire wood piled up, the fire wood two or three levels down from the top may be much drier than the wood on the top.

If the wind is from a particular direction look on the opposite side of tree trunks to find dry material to start you fire.

Once you get a fire going you will need to dry out wet logs before you place them on your fire. Use the wet logs to ring your fire and then as they dry out you can just roll them into the fire to burn.

Homemade Tinder:

Homemade tinder is a way of preparing before you go out camping or hiking so you do not need to look for supplies when you get ready to settle down for the day. There are many different combinations that work well for home made tinder. We will go into a few of these now.

Old candles that have been burnt down to the base are excellent sources of heat to start campfires.

Cotton balls covered in wax work out well. As the cotton ball burns it uses the wax as fuel to prolong the burning such that the kindling can start burning.

Lint from the drier can be used also in the place of the cotton ball.

Wax paper is also good tinder. This paper burns slower and hotter than regular news paper.

There are many types of tinder found in the home that can be used to start campfires.

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