How do you guys make your fires?

I put 2 logs close together, put tinder[branches] on top across, and put paper on top and bottom. When the tinder collapses, I put another log in the middle where the tinder and paper was.

What do you think of this method, and can you suggest some other methods?

When I was young, we had a Native American fishing guide in SE Oklahoma. He talked of teaching me the old secret indian way of making fire. He kept building it up for hours on end. That night, when it was time to make camp, he showed me the ancient indian trick.
1 create a fire pit
2 place the the fuel (charcoal) into the pit.
3 spray the lighter fluid
4 ignite with a BIC lighter.

I was somewhat disappointed, but the fish was still darn good...

It depends on where I am building the fire and what I am building it for.

Edit. OK, Northern Bush camping fire.

First of all. Make a place for the fire. This means clear ground if summer. No stuff on the ground to catch and start a forest fire.
It means a platform of green logs if winter time so that you have a raft to keep the fire from sinking into the snow.

Now I start by gathering dry dead sticks. If they are above the ground they are likely dry. Look for dead lower branches on trees too. You want everything from the size of your baby finger up to about the size of your wrist.
Everything nice and dry and dead. If it breaks with a snap instead of like a green stick it is likely dry enough to burn.
Sort it into 3 piles by size.
Last thing to gather is logs.

Then I gather a lot of small twigs. I like the little dead ones from the lower branches of a spruce tree the best.
When I have a hand full of those I try finding the dryest grasses, bark shreds and small fibery stuff I can.
Birch bark is real nice because it is very oily and burns real good. Just shred it up and stuff it into the center of the twig bundle.
Keep the grasses and shreddy bark a bit loose. Fire needs air to burn.
Add a bunch of the finger sized sticks to the outside of the bundle of twigs. Light the wad of tinder in the middle of the twigs.

Wave the bundle around a bit to fan the flames.
Set it down where you want the fire.

Start adding more small twigs and branches then some larger ones, then the ones wrist sized.
You want a jumbled pile of wood with the smallest pieces on the bottom and plenty of air gaps. The wrist sized pieces should be standing kind of like a teepee.
As the small stuff burns down the larger pieces witll flatten out.

You should be adding the largest pieces now if you want a camp fire.
This will be stuff the size of your arm.
At least 4 or 5 pieces.
they can be quite long.
You can lay them over the fire and let the fire burn through them, then just keep pushing the halves into the fire. careful not to crush and smother the fire by piling too much on it at once.
Your sticks need to be close enough to each other to use each other's heat to burn, yet have inouggh spave for good air supply.

If you want a fire for all night, now is the time to be adding even bigger sticks. you can eve throw on some freen wood if you want. the fire should be hot enough to dry and burn it by now.

(If you push your logs and sticks all together lengthways now the fire will burn along them and give you a fire you can stretch out beside.
If you built a lean to behind you it will reflect the fire heat onto your back like a baker oven.
This was the idea behind a Baker tent, which was a canvas copy of a northwoods lean-to.)

Assuming you're talking about a fire out on the trail.... I believe in always carrying several firestarters which consist of -- EZ Fire (out of Salt Lake City, Utah) its a small plastic pouch filled with a jelly like substance. Place it on TOP of your kindling and lite the edge of the pouch, it ignites everything it touches. Also carry old fashioned candle to place Under your tinder. Last I also carry a 35mm film canister of Calcium Carbide pieces. Its the stuff miners use in their headlamps. When it gets wet, it gives of flamable gas ( think its acetelyne ) just place it Under your tinder and wet it ( which if its raining or snowy is real easy ) ans place a match near it to ignite the gas fumes.

Carrying a large fixed blade knife is really handy too since if all the wood you find is wet, you can use the knife to split and shave the wood to get to the dry center pieces whic you need to start the fire.

Highly reccommend lots of practice in your driveway so when you really need to have a fire, its not the first time.

Good Luck!

In my view the secret of good fire building is spending LOTS of time gathering firewood of the proper sizes before even trying to light the fire.

I bring along a lighter and Vaseline-coated cotton balls, and then collect teeny-tiny dead branches from standing trees, and then kindling ranging from pencil-sized up to hammer-handle sized. I'll get several big piles of each.

Then I'll use a saw to cut larger fuel wood that will be used to maintain the fire over time. I prefer to gather a very large pile of fuel wood from the start rather than run around while the fire is burning.

When all the wood is ready, I'll go ahead and setup the fire. I prefer to use the lean-to setup since it tends to be more stable than teepee setups, and it puts wood closer to the tinder than putting two larger longs on each side with wood across them (like a grill).

I'll use a fairly large log as the base of the lean-to. I'll snug tinder against the log, and the place the teeny-tinies and kindling on top of the tinder - making sure I have an opening for lighting the tinder, AND making sure there is plenty of space for air to get into the kindling. That is when I'll like up the tinder.

Once the fire is starting, then I'll slowly add kindling using larger and larger pieces, and then finally adding maybe two or three pieces of smallish fuel wood to start it going. Once the first fuel wood starts burning, then I'll add more fuel wood as needed.

By the way, in my son's Boy Scout troop there is a tradition that they start a fire with as little collected wood as possible, and then once the fire is lit, they start yelling for someone to go gather wood before it burns out. Its a tradition.

Ken

I have a number of various methods depending on materials available and conditions, but most commonly I use a sheet of newspaper, a dozen or more cedar or pine staves 1/4" or less in cross section, and half a dozen more that are from 1/2" to 1" cross section, all roughly a foot to 18" long. I'll form an inverted cone with the smallest staves, inside which I will put the crumpled newspaper and light it afire. As the wood catches and the flame envelops, I begin adding the bigger staves around the cone. While these are catching fire, I will build a square around the cone with pieces two to four inches cross section, by the time I have the square built to the top of the cone, the bigger staves have caught and are just starting to ember and I will lay some choice pieces across the top of the square enclosing the cone. I try to keep the cone built about 9" high to start with, and will use the big pieces to brace the bottom of the staves so they don't tumble around too much as the pile is consumed.

I have reasonably good success with this method, and will substitute douglas fir or hemlock for the cedar and pine kindling staves if need be with fairly consistent results. I've seldom needed more than one piece of newspaper. Of course, this take a bit of prep to cut the kindling and lay out the materials and get the cone just so, but most often I am at leisure when I am doing it, so there's no urgency. If there is, then I typically use some sort of accelerant, like charcoal lighter fluid, or dry fir needles, or pitch or bacon grease or what have you. I am then not as meticulous about making kindling and constructing the perfect cone.

A tampon dunked into the gas tank of any vehicle at hand accompanied with anything that will make a spark.

That or a road flare are the last ditch "Oh my god I need a fire now." options.

Other then that, just peruse the boy scout handbook and you'll see the ways I learned to make fire and they have rarely (if ever) failed me.


edit:

the added benefit of carrying tampons as fire starters is you can use them for wound packing if the need arises.

"...Calcium Carbide pieces..."

Interesting trick, I have never heard of that one before.

Most of the time I will use your two "logs," put my "tinder" between them, they build a pyramid of decreasingly smaller fuel over the tinder...

As a kid, I punched a hole in the top of an aluminum 35mm film canister(I'm dating myself, I know), dropped in a few pieces of calcium carbide with a splash of water, screwed the lid on tight, and used the flame in place of a candle.

Well, with Calcium Carbide there's such a thing as too much of a good thing. If you get too much of it too wet, it will generate a lot of acetylene fast, and before you can get a spark to it, you will have a hazardous explosive atmosphere.

My buddy tried to make a lantern out of a plastic milk jug by putting a handful of Calcium carbide in it and adding some water. He poked a whole in the cap and lit the escaping gases. It worked fine for about 30 seconds, then the gas buildup in the jug got a bit high and it started to swell and the flame got too big and melted the cap open and the next thing we know there's this great flash bang and the shadow of my buddy is burned into my retinas. Meanwhile, he is frozen where he stands, afraid to look down at his hand because it has gone numb and he thinks it's because it's gone now. Fortunately he was uninjured, but he said all he felt when the carbide bomb went off was a tug on his arm, and then nothing.

Not something he, or I, would care to repeat.