Tips for Building a Camp Fire

If you find yourself stranded in the great outdoors, you will undoubtedly need fire. You're bound to get cold and/or hungry sometime, and who wants to be cold or have uncooked food? Here are some tips for making a camp fire.

You will obviously need to find something to burn first. Wood shavings, sawdust, bark lining, bird down, cotton fluff, pine needles or dried grass all make excellent tinder. Tinder catches the sparks from whatever you're using to light the fire. For kindling, you will need twigs, tufts of dried rags, bark or paper. Kindling conduces the heat. Your outermost layer is usually wood. You can also use coal, dry peat, dry grasses twisted up, or even dry animal dung.

Pick a location for your fire carefully. You do not want to set the mountainside ablaze or have your fire put out by wind or snow after your hard work. You will need to build your fire on a firm base. If wind is an issue you can build your fire in a hole.

If you need your fire to burn through the night, you'll need to arrange your materials in a certain way. Place your logs horizontally in a pile. You will then place two logs on each end of your fire, with one end on the ground and the other end on the top of your pile. The two semi-vertical logs will push fire away from your shelter. This type of fire will have low risk for falling logs.

To light your fire, matches are the old standby. If, for some reason, you don't have matches or they've become wet, use a magnifying glass to light your tinder. Flint can also be used. You can even attach wires to a battery and touch the wires together, which should produce a spark. If none of these are options, try cutting a groove in a soft wood. Use a hardwood stick and quickly move the end up and down the groove. A spark should eventually come.

To keep a camp fire going, you need air, fuel and heat. These elements are dependent on one another - they will increase or decrease together. Try to use a high-energy, dense material like oak for your fuel. These are hard to cut, but they burn slowly at a high heat. If you bury your fire with loose dry dirt, it might still be glowing in the morning. Adding small kindling will get it going again.

Sources:
Come Back Alive; Pelton, Robert Young; Broadway Books, 2000.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Surviving Anything; Sauer, Patrick and Zimmerman, Michael; BookEnds, LLC, 2001.
The Encyclopedia of Survival Techniques; Stilwell, Alexander; The Lyons Press, 2000.