{"id":74,"date":"2019-06-30T16:27:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-30T08:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/?p=74"},"modified":"2019-06-30T16:27:03","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T08:27:03","slug":"how-to-build-a-survival-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/how-to-build-a-survival-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Build A Survival Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If  you ever find yourself in a survival situation, especially in cold or  wet weather, few things will be as important to your survival as the  ability to make fire. Hypothermia can set in when your body temperature drops by as little as two degrees, and it goes without saying that fire  could be what stands between you and freezing to death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost as  important, a positive attitude is essential to being able to survive and  make it home to your family, and a nice warm fire can be the difference  between hope and despair. But knowing how to build a fire, especially  if you have no matches or lighter, can be difficult at best. If you&#8217;ve  never spent any time building these all-important skills, mastering them  in moments of stress will be almost impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we&#8217;ll explore the basics of how to build a fire in survival situations. Once you&#8217;ve  got the head knowledge, it&#8217;s imperative that you put that knowledge to  work in a practical way. You have to practice, practice, practice, until  the different ways of building a survival fire become a part of your  muscle memory. Only then can you be sure that when it really matters,  you&#8217;ll be able to call your skills to mind. You can&#8217;t save yourself, or  anyone else, if your knowledge never makes it off the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"339\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cdwOIdQ4VuI\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"theproperprep-20\";\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"manual\";\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\namzn_assoc_design = \"enhanced_links\";\namzn_assoc_asins = \"B00QGKYKJA\";\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit\";\namzn_assoc_linkid = \"175fcd076da8294e640816290b8e49ec\";\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script><br>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Where To Build A Survival Fire: Location, location, location<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As\n they say in real estate, it&#8217;s all about the location. The same holds \ntrue for choosing a place to build your fire. There are several things \nto consider:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Where will your shelter be placed?<\/span> If  you&#8217;ve not already erected a shelter, choosing a location for your fire  should be made in conjunction with a choice about shelter placement. If  possible, choose an area below the canopy of a covering tree where limbs  are over 10 feet high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">What direction is the wind coming from?<\/span>  This also applies to your shelter location. Selecting a fire site that  is out of the wind will help in building the fire, maintaining the fire,  staying out of the smoke, and controlling the fire, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">What are the ground conditions?<\/span>  On wet ground your fire will struggle, if you ever get it started at  all. In wet areas, or snow, you may have to build up a base for your  fire to sit on. Choose rocks or green bows to build something out of the  wet to build a fire on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4.<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"> Identify and protect against wildfire danger<\/span>:  Clear the area of debris and build a containment area. Fist size stones  make a good fire ring, a trench or pit can also be used, anything to  help ensure that your survival blaze doesn&#8217;t become the spark that sets  the world on fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Fuel To Start Your Survival Fire: Identifying Usable Material<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You\n can&#8217;t have a fire without fuel. Best case scenario you&#8217;re in a wooded \narea full of dead, dry wood just waiting to be gathered up and turned \ninto a roaring blaze. Standing dead timber makes the best firewood. If \nyou aren&#8217;t so lucky, remember that any items can be used to feed a fire.\n Dry dung will burn, if you can find it. Grasses, bundled and tied into \nknots, will burn longer than if it&#8217;s loosely piled. Whatever you can \nfind, get as much as you think you&#8217;ll need, gathered to the place you&#8217;ve\n chosen for your fire, and then double it. Nobody ever gathers enough \nfirewood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Finding Dry Tinder<\/span>: this can be a challenge in  wet conditions. Tinder is the fine materials used to catch a spark, and  the most basic part of any fire. If you were building a fire at home, in  a fireplace, wadded newspaper would be your tinder. But in the wild,  you&#8217;ll have to carry in, find, or make tinder. A small pile of fire  starting material is called a tinder nest. Knowing where to look for  tinder can be the difference between getting a spark to catch, and going  cold through the night. If you can, locate a fallen tree or limb. Even  after days of rain, the underside of the tree can hide dry materials. If  there isn&#8217;t dry grass, twigs or leaves, take your knife and scrape up  into the log, on the downward facing side, to create a bed of spongy  dead wood. As long as you&#8217;re using your knife, you can shave off the  outer wet layer of a good sized stick, to reveal the drier wood  underneath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Making Tinder<\/span>: Your clothing can also provide  you with some usable tinder. Scrape the sharp blade of your knife along a  flannel shirt, cotton t-shirt, or blue jeans to create a small pile of  made-to-order lint. Use your knife to whittle a stick into a pile of  shavings. The outside may be wet, but the wood inside will be much  dryer. Cat tails and tree moss, if you can find them dry, also make  great tinder for starting your fire. Cat tails go up fast, though, so  have your other materials ready before you light it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Bringing Your Own Tinder<\/span>:  To avoid having to hunt tinder in poor conditions, you could carry some  on you. A good wilderness pack should always contain a fire starting  kit that would include tinder, among other things. There are several  great commercial fire starter kits that would be very handy to have on  hand in a survival situation. In addition to your fire starter kit, here  are several types of tinder that would be easy to find around the house  and put in the bottom of your pack, to always have with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 <strong>Cotton balls<\/strong> covered in petroleum jelly (you&#8217;ll want to put these inside a baggie to keep them from getting on everything else)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 <strong>Steel wool<\/strong> &#8211; super fine grade works best<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 <strong>Lighter wood<\/strong> &#8211; pine wood chunks, soaked in pitch, usually from the stump of a tree<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 <strong>Dryer lint<\/strong>\n &#8211; you make some every time you do a load of washing. Put a couple of \nloads worth in a Ziploc bag, put it down in the bottom of your carry \nbag, and forget it&#8217;s there until you need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 <strong>Char cloth<\/strong> &#8211; heat cloth in a container until it quits smoking &#8211; it should be dark brown<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Homemade Accelerant<\/span>:  If you have a tube of petroleum based chap stick, you can cut a corner  off of your cotton or flannel shirt or jeans, rub it good with chap  stick and use it as a base for your homemade dryer lint tinder. The chap  stick cloth will act as a wick, pulling petroleum into the lint,  encouraging your tinder to burn longer, giving you a better chance of  getting your natural tinder to light and take off. This can be  especially helpful if you&#8217;re having trouble finding a dry area to start  your tinder nest. There are other materials that can be used as an  accelerant, if you can find them. Petroleum jelly, or petroleum based  antibiotic from your first aid kit will burn, as will WD40, super glue,  motor oil and a number of other household items that you likely wouldn&#8217;t  have in a survival situation, but who knows? Mixing these accelerants  with your fine tinder or a bit of cloth will help them to burn even  longer, giving your other materials a chance to dry out and catch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How To Start Your Survival Fire: Tinder Nests<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How\n to build a fire if you don&#8217;t have matches or a bic lighter? Not a \nquestion you want to face for the first time in a life or death \nsituation. There are many methods for building a fire without matches. \nAn important thing to remember is that tinder burns quickly, so before \nsetting the spark to your tinder, have the next step ready to go. You \ndon&#8217;t want to have to start three or four tinder nests, before you get \nyour fire going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gather a bundle of twigs into a bunch, like \nyou&#8217;re picking wild flowers. Holding the thicker ends together firmly at\n the bottom, the narrower ends up. Pack the narrow ends full of tinder \n(this is tinder separate from your tinder nest), then stand the whole \nthing on its head, with the tinder now on the bottom. Adjust the bundle \nas necessary to make it stand up in your fire pit. Now you&#8217;re ready to \nset a spark to your tinder nest, then push the lighted tinder into the \nbottom of the bundle, igniting the entire thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How To Start Your Survival Fire: Friction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\n are already a number of great guides on how to build a fire with \nfriction. You can learn the steps here from the Boy Scouts of America or\n here from Field and Stream Friction fires are more difficult to master,\n and certainly should be learned and practiced by anyone serious about \ntheir survival craft. But there are some easier, though less discussed, \nmethods for starting a fire that we are going to focus on here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Flint and Steel<\/span>:  This is the easiest of all the &#8220;survival&#8221; methods, and barely qualifies  as &#8220;friction based fire.&#8221; All that&#8217;s required is a piece of flint and  piece of high carbon steel, like your survival knife. A spark is formed  through friction, by striking the steel against the flint. Place your  tinder bundle to catch the sparks and gently blow the spark to life,  once it catches in the tinder. If you haven&#8217;t carried flint with you,  you may be lucky enough to find some around. This YouTube video shows  you how to identify flint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How To Start Your Survival Fire: Lens<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Standard Lens<\/strong>:\n this method is pretty straight forward. Most little boys have practiced\n this method on ants unfortunate enough to set up camp in their yard. \nThe biggest downside to this method is that it only works on a sunny \nday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 Find a lens &#8211; magnifying glass, binoculars, reading \nglasses, lens from a camera (you&#8217;d probably have to remove it), even the\n lens from the end of a flashlight, removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 Hold the lens up to\n the sun, tilting it to focus the sun into a fine point of light, hold \nthe light steady on your tinder nest until it ignites. If you&#8217;re using \nbinoculars to focus your light, hold the wide end up to the sun, \nfocusing the light out the narrow end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 Steady! A steady hand is \nimportant, as is patience. A point of light that moves all over the \nplace will never build up enough heat to light the tinder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Less Common Lenses: <\/strong>Lenses can be created out of unusual items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022\n Ice can be made into a lens, given the right circumstances. Absolutely \nclear water is necessary. With an approximately 2&#8243; thick piece of clear \nice, use your survival knife to shape the ice into the rough shape of a \nlens. You can also use nearby stone to grind the ice into the right \nshape. Using the heat from your hand to smooth the edges of your ice \nlens, you should end up with a piece of ice that is much thicker in the \nmiddle than it is on the edges. Think &#8220;coke bottle glasses&#8221; kind of a \nlens. Then use the ice to focus the sunlight in the same way you would a\n traditional lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 Coke can lens &#8211; not exactly a lens, but \nanother way to focus sunlight is to polish the aluminum on the bottom of\n a drink can to a high shine. You can use toothpaste, sand, or even \nchocolate to polish the aluminum to a high shine and then reflect the \nsun back onto the tinder nest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 Water bottle &#8211; a preferably clear\n water bottle filled with water, can be transformed into a lens by \nremoving the label and holding curved side of the bottle up to focus the\n sunlight onto your tinder nest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 Bag of water &#8211; this method is \nabout as simple as it sounds. Water in a clear plastic bag creates a \nbulging side that acts as a lens for focusing the heat of the sun and \ngiving you fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>One Additional Note:<\/strong> focusing \nyour beam of light onto darker material is more successful in igniting \nthan lighter material. Char cloth would be an ideal tinder for this \nscenario, but if all you have is natural tinder, focus your beam on the \ndarkest you have in your nest. Once you get the tinder to smoke, \ncontinue to hold the beam of light in place until you have a genuine \nspark, then gently blow the spark into a flame and move your tinder nest\n into your kindling bundle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The lesson with lens methods is to be \ncreative. Don&#8217;t give up. If you lack the means to start a fire with one \nmethod, look around to see what else you might have available that just \nmay work. A never quit attitude will bring you home to your family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How To Start Your Survival Fire: Other Methods<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Batteries and Steel Wool<\/span>:  Hopefully you&#8217;ve carried in, or can find, something with batteries in  it and some fine grade steel wool. This is one of the easiest methods of  fire starting, short of having matches or a lighter. Even a battery as  small as AA will work. Slightly shred a piece of the steel wool, and  make it long enough to reach both ends of the battery. Be sure you don&#8217;t  break the continuity of the steel wool. Hold the steel wool to both  ends of the battery and it will ignite, almost immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Battery and aluminum gum wrapper<\/span>:  much like steel wool, this method is easy, but you have to move quick  to make the most of the spark. The paper flashes and burns out just as  fast. Shape the chewing gum wrapper into an hour glass shape, fat at  both ends, narrow in the middle. This shape concentrates the flow of  electricity in the middle, igniting the paper very quickly. But it goes  out almost immediately, so your tinder will need to be very dry, and  very close by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With every method, once you get a spark in your \ntinder nest, blow it gently until you create a flame, and then move it \nto the bundle of kindling, to start your fire. Once your kindling is \ngoing good, add slightly larger pieces of wood, being careful not to \nsmother your flame. Congratulations! You&#8217;ve started a fire!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Practice How To Build A Fire<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All\n the head knowledge in the world will do you little good in an emergency\n situation if you can&#8217;t call it to mind. Even skills that you can \nremember, but have never done, will be difficult to do for the very \nfirst time under stressful conditions. Take every opportunity to build a\n fire to use one of these non-traditional ways of doing so. Show your \nchildren or your friends how to build a fire without a match. They&#8217;ll be\n impressed with you and closer to possessing this all-important \nlife-saving skill themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kelli is the owner of http:\/\/www.EverydayCarryGear.com  and publisher of &#8220;How To Build A Survival Fire&#8221;, one of the many  articles designed to educate and help you the reader be prepared and  ready for action in whatever survival situation you could find yourself  in. If you enjoyed this article, I recommend heading over to website for  some more great reads.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you ever find yourself in a survival situation, especially in cold or wet weather, few things will be as important to your survival as the ability to make fire. Hypothermia can set in when your body temperature drops by&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-butane-fuel","category-lighter-pouches","category-lighters","category-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theproperprep.com\/lights-and-matches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}