Cold today. 21 degrees. Freezing rain all last night. Sleet all morning. Perfect weather to practice fire building. I have my RAT-3, OHT with attached BSA Hot Spark and ONE PJ cotton ball.



Here's the deck. I can't get all the ice out of my fire bed (Lodge Grill).



To augment my lone PJ cotton ball, I pry a little pitch soaked bark from the pine tree.



I found a slab of maple to use as a platform to build my fire on buried in the brushpile behind my shop. It was mostly dry at the bottom of the pile. All my kindling came fron the bottom of the brushpile. Everything else is cover in ice. Here are the tools of the trade. Thet went to work splitting some matchstick and pencil sized kindling.



PJ cotton and pine pitch soaked bark ready to go.



One strike of the BSA Hot Spark on the spine of the RAT-3



Slowly feeding the fire. I almost smothered it TWICE, trying to hurry. The sleet didn't help matters, either.



Young fire and tools.



Fire pretty well established. It's taking some damp wood at this point.




This process took about 30 minutes. I was surprized it took so long. The fire needed to be fiddled with constantly to keep going. In the woods, I would have had more access to wood. Here in the yard, there are only 5 trees and the only tree that I can reach limbs on is a Willow. The brushpile was my sole source of fuel. Had fun. Good practice.