fire

Knowing how to make fire is a necessity in the bush. Fire offers you warmth, protection from wild animals, a way to cook food, boil and purifiy water, dry clothes, make tools and signal for help. Its good to not only know several differnt methods to start a fire, but to practice regularly in different conditions and become efficient at all methods. It could save your life.

Always make sure to have plenty of firewood close by before lighting your fire , you dont want to have to keep going back for more while trying to keep the fire a'light.

Soft resinous wood and dead wood is good for starting fire, hardwoods will burn longer and give more heat.

In wet conditions

-If the ground is wet, dig a pit and and line it with dry rocks, or build a log platform and build your fire on top of this. With the dirt you dig up, make a birm around the fire and layer rocks on top of it to block the wind.

-Take standing wood thats not directly on the ground after a rain, everything on ground will be soaked through.

-Cut open wet wood to expose the dryer inner wood, set wet wood close by fire to dry.

Build a log cabin with small branches, and put your tinder inside- dry grass, leaves, wood shavings, pinecones, bark, etc.

Ignite your birds nest with your preferred method, (in this case flint and steel) and begin blowing on it, when the tinder gets going, set in small twigs vertically- they burn good this way because the flame goes up, then pile your collection of larger sticks around and on top of the fire. Continue fanning with air to build heat.

Larger branches and then finally big logs can go on top of this once the fire gets going good.

You can shave damp sticks so they catch fire more easily.

Its a good idea to carry an emergency fire starting kit. Store matches, wood shavings, dryer lint, vaselin soaked cotton balls, etc. in containers you can seal with tape to make waterproof.

Stay tuned for more as i try my hand with a friction drill next time.