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