Art, do you know how they did it in any tribe?

I don't know too much about how any particular tribe or group have assembled their 'fire logs', also called 'fire bundles'. There are quite a few descriptions in historical, and anthropological, accounts but the ones I have read have been mostly a description of the outside container and a vague description of the inside and function but they lack details. The few survival manuals that mention them are not much better.

I think this has to do with them being assembles on-site with whatever materials are on hand. So a hard-fast recipe is not possible. That isn't going to go over very well with those who are seeking certainty and control through planning and preparation. It won't much bother those who understand that survival is often an exercise in improvisation and making due with what you have at hand.

The constants are pretty simple:

A container or means of holding it all together. In SE Asia, places with large diameter bamboo, they tend to use it as a ready container. Areas with [censored] bark roll their bundles. I have read about coconut shells, clay pots, hollow logs (natural or manufactured). Cans, and large shell casings, from artillery, also get mentioned.

Coals at the center are bedded in dried, half-rotted, slow burning, material. Punky, soft, half-rotted, wood shows up in a lot of accounts. But I have read at least one description that used dried moss as the slow burning fuel closest to the coals.

Around this goes green and/or slightly damp materials that are further insulation, protect the outer shell by slowing and containing combustion. Any damp materials used will tend to dry in use and they can be be used closer to the core when the bundle is remade.

I suspect most of us have some experience with the wider principles of this sort of thing. Anyone who has built a campfire of any size and duration has marveled at how coals can remain viable for many hours, sometimes days, after the fire appeared to be 'out'. A bit of fuel and a puff of air and the fire can jump back to life. This is the reason why Smokey the Bear tells you the fire isn't out until it is out and cold.

I've messed around with coals, punk wood from the woods out back, grass and a coffee can. Without even trying really I got the coals to last six hours.

What worked for me was a coffee can I had used a knife to knock holes around side near the bottom. In this I arranged a fairly tight and dense bird's nest of fresh green grass and leaves. maybe an inch thick. I piled the grass in and pressed it into a dense mass with my fist. Inside this I arranged a nest, maybe another inch thick, of green grass I had dried over the grill.

Inside this I poured in punk wood, oak I think, from a fallen tree from the woods behind the house, that I had pounded out of the log with a hatchet and dried over the grill. Punky wood is like a sponge and I had to dry it on a pie pan, bake and stir, for a very long time. All this drying would be done on site at your fire in the field. Once dried I poured it into the nest of the dried grass producing a ball about the size of a softball. I poked a hole about the size of a golf ball in the top to accept the coals.

Then, using a pair of sticks as tongs, I picked up a couple of good sized coals, collectively about the volume of ping-pong ball, and dropped them in the punk wood nest. Then I filled over this with more punk wood, dried grass, fresh grass. Firming up each layer but not pounding it tight. I left it at this but could in the field use light line to make a carrier. Sort of like the macrame flowerpot holders. This I could hang from a stick and carry over my shoulder as a bindle.

I guess that if rain or dew was an issue I would need to arrange some sort of cover. Also, having gone to the trouble of drying more than enough materials I would want to make a rain tight bundle of spare materials. These might also come in handy as tinder when it came to use my fire bundle to build a fire.

The accounts of anthropologists say the people would usually rebuild their fire log each morning from the fire that was burning at night. Taking care to gather and dry materials each night to have on hand for the bundle in the morning.

In my last attempt I got curious after six hours and dumped it out to find out how I did. It was still warm and emitting a bit of smoke but what that meant was still a mystery. Dumped out I found small but still red hot coals that flared up after I dropped a little of the dried grass on it and blew a bit. On a cooperative summer night it worked like a dream. How my little red coals would fare in a driving rain and gale force wind is more doubtful. But in my mind it was proof of concept and an assurance that given a need, and a little luck, I could make it work.

I got interested in this when the summer rains came and after two weeks of daily rain everything in the nearby softwood, semi-tropical forest was soaking wet and covered in mold, fungus and moss. Yes, I could get a fire started with what was in my kit but one only has so much butane, tinder, matches and if it was an emergency in a remote spot I would want to carefully husband resources. The fire log made a lot of sense. I could use my precious resources to get the first fire going and carry the fire with me.

Even if the fire bundle didn't work and it went out it still represented a large supply of dry materials that would make the next fire easier. A valuable resource where the land is perpetually waterlogged. The PNW and tropical jungles come to mind.

The majority of Florida woods aren't all that bad most of the time. Pine stumps can often be found with lightered wood soaked in turpentine. A highly prized resource that locals can be secretive about. Find a good lightered stump and you don't want others to use it all up.

Also the hairs of certain ferns and inside a palmetto burn well even if damp. A trick is to place damp materials into an old sock or bandanna made into a small bundle and to keep it in your pocket where it dries, and gets pounded into fine tinder. Don't place this in your pants pocket if you can help it.

IMO the fire bundle is a useful addition to your bag of tricks and any time spent familiarizing yourself with them would be time well spent.

Edited for spelling and clarity.

"lightered wood" ??

Another good post, thanks.

Kind of a southern term I guess. You might know it as 'fatwood' or 'fat lighter'.

When pine trees are cut or fall naturally there is often a stump left in the earth. Connected to this stump are roots filled with sap. If conditions are right this sap flows from the roots into the stump even as the stump is rotting. The wood, the lower part of the stump and often a few of the larger roots become saturated with this sap and will not rot. Even after many decades.

If your careful and observant you can sometimes find one of these stumps. Looks like what it is, a rotted pine stump. But if you cut into it you can smell turpentine and see that a good chunk of wood has not rotted because the heartwood is soaked in turpentine. Even soaking wet this stuff catches fire easily and burns fiercely. A stick the size of you little finger will get even wet wood burning. It is a traditional material for lighting a fire and the term used for it is 'lightered' pine.

There was an entire industry made around the turpentine industry. Originally they would harvest sap not too much different than they do with maples. Slicing the bark, hanging a trough and collecting it. The sap collected was cooked to extract the turpentine, pine oil, and rosin. All valuable commodities. Goes way back.

But in time between the trees cut for wood and killed in collecting sap most of the big long leaf pines in Florida disappeared by the late twenties. But lightered stumps, most often from trees cut for lumber in marshy ground, don't rot and remained because they were considered too difficult to pull out.

Later, when times got tough and jobs were hard to find men would walk the woods, find lightered stumps, dig them out and carry them to a turpentine plant. Where the wood was chipped and cooked to draw off the turpentine. Many a family in the depression kept food on the table going out into the woods and mashes and 'turpentining'.

Find yourself a large lightered stump and you have a supply of 'fat lighter' for life. I have seen it sell for about $5 for a handful. Probably considerably more now.

Fat wood is sold in supermarkets in my part of CA. Great explanation and background. Thanks, Art!