Howdy,

I love campfires, and consider fire building an art. Speaking from my own experiance the only time I have ever had a fire go out on accident was because it ran out of fuel or the fuel was to spread out.

I imagine the type of wood also has a great deal of impact for instance using green wood or wet wood will naturally slow the cumbustion process.

As far as laying out a fire horizantally I stick to the teepee or lean to to get the fire started and make sure it gets good and hot. Once there is a good bed of coals it doesn't really matter how I add wood as long as the logs are close to each other.

I have found that it is much easier to get larger logs to catch fire by putting them on top of smaller logs that are already burning. Of course this rule is the same for building the fire in the first place. Start small and work up to big.

Hope this helps.

Josh