Since we've been chatting about the tools of the trade, I thought I'd share a quick look about how bacpacboy and I prepped our wood for the campfire on our recent trip.

When we first got to camp, we spent an hour or so collecting tinder and kindling, from the standing deadwood around our campsite. bacpacboy hates that we spend so long on it, preferring to go exploring right away and thinking that we can just collect it as we need it. I always remind him that time spent now is time saved later, and that fire is one of the most important things we need to prep for because it cleans our water, cooks our food, protects us from animals, keeps us warm, gives us light, etc.

We hung up a GI style nylon poncho as a lean-to to protect what we weren't using to protect it from the elements.



As he does every time he uses it, he refilled his tinder bag as we went along. We also made more char cloth out of an old pair of blue jeans and a tin he keeps in his kit.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm5DDctGv4E[/youtube]

Other than the old, stick a branch between two trees and push method, we had an array of tools for wood processing.



We both had a folding knife in our pockets - he had his SAK Camper and I had my CRKT Mt. Rainier. We used these when we were collecting tinder.

We also had my Bacho Laplander folding saw to collect standing deadwood.

He used my old Ruko Meula fixed blade and I used my Mora LMF Fireknife to make shavings and feather sticks.

We brought two bags of split hardwood with us, that had been curing in the garage for the past couple of years. I used my Gerber BG USK to split that down further, by batonning

I sharpened them all, except the Laplander, with the sharpening stone on the back of the BGUSK sheath.


At the end of the trip, we had enough fire prep left over to start one more fire, including a couple of pieces of split wood. We stacked it between two trees and left it for the next people to use the site. There was heavy rain in the weekend forecast, and I would certainly appreciate the head start on a fire if I was arriving there in the wet weather.




p.s. We also used his multi-tool to move pots and pans in and out of the fire, and probably could have substituted it for one of our folding knives, but we just left it with the cooking gear at camp.