Keeping the first fire going

So you got a fire started, great! Now you need to keep it going while you do other survival activities, and you are going to want to take fire with you when you travel. How are you going to do that?

i'll have to go down to the basement and look thru the "2nd rate" book heap but i know i have something on a guy who got lost in Yellowstone in the 1800's and carried a flaming branch around once he got a fire going..

Out here in the forest you can keep the fire going a good four or five hours just putting bigger chunks of wood on. The embers stay good long enough to get chores done. If you were really worried about it, you could pile a heap of old fir cones on the embers and let them smolder all day, or old elk or cow droppings if you can find any.

For travel, a good leaf bundle is pretty handy. Grass will work too, but you have to bundle it tight and be able to stick an ember down in the center. Again, bovine dung also smolders along well, as do old fir cones.

I also like to collect coniferous pitch/resin from trees when out and about. It makes a handy fire aid for all kinds of things. For instance, drop an ember in a small amount of pitch, give er a blow or two, and instant flame on.

The anthropological literature contains stories of techniques for traveling with fire, usually encasing a smoldering hardwood coal in wet banana leaves, and stopping every now and then to coax it back to life. Mostly these reflect the difficulty of starting fires in a non-match (or flint and steel) situation. I would concentrate on being sure I had a good quantity of dry fire starter and tinder before breaking camp - after being sure that my fire was dead out.

I used to give evening campfire programs in the days when they involved a real, live campfire. The ranger giving the program had to light the fire. No matter how early you arrived to light the fire, you always had an audience. So you were honor bound to do it the woodsy way - natural tinder and , of course, just one match.

One evening I had lit such a fire and turned my attention to mixing with the audience (especially the young ladies). I turned to look at my campfire - no flames, only a thin wisp of smoke - crisis!

I spent a good five minutes coaxing that fire back to life - gently blowing, tenderly feeding small bits of tender, anything I could think of to avoid the disgrace of a second match. Finally I resurrected that fire, to applause from the audience....

Your fire isn't going until the main elements are ignited and more fuel is ready to feed into the flame.

When I used a fire regularly, we would usually try to revive the fire from the previous evening's coals. Typically we were successful. On one occasion, using desert ironwood as our fuel, we did not have to do a thing except put the coffee pot on a bed of glowing coals - still perfect for cooking from the evening before.

Playing with fire is fun and useful, but it is one reason I went to a light, simple alcohol stove for SAR operations. You can get it going quickly and positively, moving on to other pressing concerns.

Once I have a fire going, my "survival activity" consists of drinking at least one nice cup of tea. My broken arm will just have to take a number and wait.

Exactly

I've had a fire going sense Sunday night Just keep adding logs to it, and when I`m away for long periods or night put on 2 big logs It was 65*F in my house this AM when I woke up and 19 outside, can't complain about that

Traveling with fire = something to throw sparks with, or a ligther if you carry one of those in your PSK.

Add some green wood to the fire along with seasoned wood will keep your fire going. It's a bit smokey though. There is not much need to carry fire in this day and age, you will still have to collect kindling and fuel once your at your destination so you might as well start from scratch.

For clarity, the thread assumes you somehow got a first fire started in a survival situation but want to avoid whatever trials you went through to start the first fire and so want to keep it going and also to somehow carry it when you travel.

Horses Hoof Fungus works reasonably well if you can find any for the purpose.

Fire is crucial. My experience has been that those who can build a fire, survive. Those who can't, don't.

Keeping a fire going, once it is started, is trivial. Before long, the glowing bed of coals will ignite rock. You can let the fire flicker out, throw on some more fuel, and away you go..

If starting a fire were so difficult that I would need to consider carrying glowing coals, I would seriously reconsider the decision to travel. It could easily be better to stay put, rather than travel.

Usually you travel to improve your situation. In the mountains of the western US, a very short trip will put you in a different environment, typically warmer and drier, with greater ease of fire building. If I could not anticipate those conditions, I would stay put.

Maybe I am pushing the envelope too much.

I am thinking of getting caught in a situation where you have essentially exhausted your ability to make fire, perhaps by repeated failures, or had the ability to make fire forcibly removed from you by injury, accident, or otherwise, barely succeeded, and cannot or do not want to go through that again if you can possibly help it. Instead you strongly need to preserve your first fire.

Then, perhaps going one more step too far, I threw in a need to move or travel - to avoid risk, for self-rescue, whatever - which puts you in a situation where you need to carry a bit of that first fire with you.

Hopefully far-fetched but not beyond imagining. And perhaps educational to add to your survival contemplations and preparations?

This statment might be true if it was said about shelter!

What the pioneers did:

1) You need a noncombustible container to transport the coals; the old-times would use a hollow cow horn, you can use your cup; you might also be able to make a 'cup' if you access to river clay and a fire to fire it in. Fill your cup about 1/3 full with ashes, add your coal, cover with about the same amount of ashes. Don't choke it off by sealing it against air. I would assume that a larger coal is better than a smaller coal, but that is an assumption on my part. To avoid having to hold your cup in your hand, make a swinging carrier for it so you can hang it from your arm or pack without dumping it. Coals from hardwood are said to last longer than coals from softwoods.

2. For longer carry, they would wrap the coal with dry, flexible bark or some dry, punky wood that would smolder slowly, then wrap that bundle with damp grass or other dampish material (rather than ash) and put it in the container. Again, it needs air.

When traveling, I would think the biggest problem would be to guard against dumping it, esp dumping it without knowing it. I would think that the person carrying the coal would literally be the Keeper of the Flame. Or at least The Keeper of the Coal. Probably quite an important job at some points in time.

Sue

You guys aren't very good at cheating...

1. To have a portable fire, I'd use a torch. No, not a flashlight. Take a broomstick, wrap gauze around the end, soak in alcohol, and light with your fire. Learned this from a very cute dancer several years ago. Works great.

2. If possible, have someone tend your fire while you travel and light your new fire. This way you always have one fire going.

Now you say I don't have any fuel, and no gauze or substitute like a t-shirt? I would then ask "what sort of cartoon have I been drawn into, that I'm so ill prepared?"

This was interesting, though. I'm going to have to try to make my own torch...never know when I might have to join up with a bunch of villagers and chase monsters.

In my experience, shelter comes in a very close #2. I am not talking hypothetical here, I am talking about real victims, some of whom lived and some of whom died. Fire, or its absence, was critical. On a few occasions, I was among the potential victims.

Let me go over the obvious.

Hypothermia may be the number one killer in the outdoors. If so, then, after breathing, staying warm, or if you need to getting warm, is the priority.

In cooling wind, rain, snow, etcetera, you must get out of the elements to preserve body heat - you need shelter. If a good insulating shelter is found or created timely, then your own body heat can sustain you for quite a while. You will then be able to survive without a fire for a time, so long as your body fat or uncooked calories are available to keep your inner fire stoked.

If you have lost a lot of body heat and / or you cannot find or create a good insulating shelter, then you pretty much need a heat source to survive, be it a fire or a willing friend or two. Once body heat is restored, see above.

You can die in 3: minutes without air, hours without shelter in a cooling environment, days without water, and weeks without food.

Any way you slice it fire is important. I do not think the debate on whether shelter or fire is more important can be answered out of a specific context, but this thread is intended to focus on two fire-related topics: keeping it going and taking it with you.

Let the games continue!

Edit: Please forgive exclusion of desert-type dehydration hazard environments.

I suppose one thing you could do while you have a fire going is to dry some tinder, possibly prepare some char cloth or something to make starting the next fire easier in case you do lose the first fire.

If you had an old can you could carry a small fire in it too. charcoal maybe with extra charcoal to feed it as you trek.

Actually, falls are the number one killer in the outdoors. Falling is a potential hazard present in all environments and many, many people succumb to it. You can trip over your shoelaces and hit your head just wrong - and die. Any free fall, out of a tree or off a cliff, in excess of forty feet, and you are pretty much dead.

I knew I would draw heat in emphasizing the need for fire. The prime mantra in the survival school industry is "shelter is the #1 priority." Everyone knows it.

It is a little more subtle than that. Blasted by adverse weather, you need to create a microclimate that will allow body functions to regain something like normal function. Fire is handy in this situation.

In practice, you can't build a fire without some sort of shelter, but that shelter can be as subtle as the lee side of a boulder - not perfect, but it will suffice. You then create "shelter" by snugging up the hood on your very good parka (or better still, drag out that bivy sack you were smart enough to bring along). If you can't do that, you definitely need to build or find something sheltering.

Fire and shelter together solve the problem of creating a "recovery microenvironment," the vital necessity that will see you through to the next day.

Guys! Shift the shelter versus fire debate to a new thread, please.

let's limit this thread to a discussion about how to keep the first fire going and how to transport it.

Thanks.

Well, you could add a Slow Match to your kit. Or carry a Calalitic Hand Warmer. The latter brings a lot of other advantages with it as well.

Pat

Pat, some interesting items. Thanks.

Do you know if the hand warmer can be used to start a fire? If it can, how?

Do you know what the rope is impregnated with to turn it into a slow match, for DIY creation of one?

I haven't tried it but if you lightly touch a cotton ball to the burner I doubt that you would damage it.

The Jon-e hand warmer has a wick:



You can Google "slow match" or "matchlocks" and find several recipes. Unless you're into historical re-enacting or matchlock shooing (which I assume you are not), I'd say just order them online.

Pat

One of the older style of hand warmer was a metal case with insulation in it that held a burning charcoal stick inside. They usually burned for about 5 hours.
I think you would get the same effect from embers carried in a container full of ash.
(If you have something like this just to carry a fire it seems to me you might be better just packing a lighter with you.)

Another fire carrier is the bark from Douglas Fir. The embers
(coals) seem to burn into is just like punk and smolder away for a long time.
Oh I just reminded me about punk. Punk is the dozey half rotted but dry cedar you find inside some logs. It is another material that will carry an ember for a long time.

I forgot about those: Charcoal Handwarmer

Still, having a "purpose built" item is in line with being prepared. Otherwise you are relying on finding a field expedient substitute.

And, it is still a hand warmer. Not a bad item to have at times.

Pat

are the sticks for the hand warmer just charcoal or do they have something mixed it to keep them going?..

Everything I've seen just says "solid charcoal".

I've had (and probably still have somewhere) both types. A Coleman lighter fluid type in the '60s and the charcoal type in the '70s. The lighter fluid type was MUCH better. But for the purposes of this thread, the charcoal one is more appropriate.

Pat

Thanks PSM. That is what I was thinking about. It says it burns 10 hours so I was only about half right.
I agree they might be a good item to have handy.
One thing about the charcoal is they can sit on a shelf for ages and still work when you need it.

SFAIK the sticks were just compressed charcoal. The fact they were insulated helped them stay lit. I can remember stubbing the sticks out when done with the warmer and relighting them later.

So called 'fire logs' are pretty common with indigenous populations where the rainfall is high and things tend to stay wet. In rain soaked jungle it can be a major problem to find anything that is dry enough to reliably use to create fire from friction or a limited amount of sparks. In such places, independent of a lighter or other modern means, creating a fire from scratch can be a really big deal. Not an experience you want go through regularly.

Once created the emphasis is on preserving fire. Usually as a glowing coal. The way this was accomplished was to create a fire log. A common form was piece of split bamboo about 3" in diameter that was filled with plant materials that had been carefully selected for their ability to support a coal and dried with the last fire. Once filled and a coal installed the split bamboo would be lashed closed and frequently provided with a shoulder strap. Set up correctly, the methods are an art form handed down from generation to generation and vary widely according to location and culture, they were recorded as being able to support a coal for several days reliably.

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!