Tag: Fire

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Camping tips

Now that we are officially well into the camping season here in the northwest. I thought we should share some of our favorite camping tips.

One thing all of us will face when camping is laundry, even if you don’t have to wash your clothes you will inevitably need to hang something up to dry. We usually will just drape it over one of the many rope strung around camp or the back of a chair,this is not very efficient. Next time try using the little plastic clip from a bread bag, they work great as clothespins and are easy the pack.

Tired of all your cooler stuff getting soaked after a couple of days in the melting ice. Try filling old drink bottle 80% with water and freezing them before you go out next time. You won’t have the usual cooler swamp and you also end up with a bunch of fresh drinking water when they melt.

Ever trip over the guy lines of your tent when climbing out for your nightly relief, I have, they are hard to see when you are mostly asleep. Try this, take short little mostly useless pieces of tin foil and make little flags on your guy lines. The moon reflects nicely off these, not to mention your flashlight.

Always put a rock with a nice big flat top, level in the fire ring, it is so nice to have a place to keep your food and drinks warm by the fire.

Last but not least, we deal with the most dreaded camping nuisance of all, mosquitoes! You just can’t seem to avoid them, so here is a couple of useful tips. Firstly, bring some sage sprigs with you, when the mosquitoes are thick, through some on the fire, they hate it. Secondly, after you get bit, and you most certainly will, use a little dab of toothpaste, not gel, directly on the bite, it knocks down the itch and helps it heal faster.

Well that’s it for now

As always,

Stay Vigilant and Be Prepared

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Survival Hacks – Fire good

You should know by now one of my favorite topics is fire. I believe it is the most important tool outside of what you carry. Being able to start a fire can be the difference between life and death or just simply make your life a lot more comfortable and tasty.

So let’s get started with my favorite fire hacks:

  • Empty toilet paper rolls stuffed with dryer lint: This is my favorite because of both its simplicity and thrift, it is completely free and way too easy to make, to not have one on hand. Simply collect the dryer lint from your dryer, if you use communal dryers you could collect everyone’s, then simple stuff it loosely into an empty toilet paper tube. You can also cut a paper towel tube in half and make two. These make excellent tinder.
  • Cotton balls smothered in petroleum jelly: Ok, this one isn’t free and uses new materials, but it really works well. Just like it sounds, take a few cotton balls and saturate them with petroleum jelly – I usually stuff them in an old pill bottle, but a film canister would work, too. Oh wait, we don’t have those anymore but you get the idea. This is also excellent tinder.
  • Tea lights: These are so cheap and light that you should carry a few and they have so many uses that I consider them indispensable. For example: they replace tinder with a self-sustaining mini fire.

Of course all of the above hacks assume you have a lighter or matches, they are not ways to make fire without the former, they are simply aids. Which gives me the idea – we should talk about how to start a fire without a match or lighter. Keep your eyes open for that in an upcoming post.

 

As always,

Stay Vigilant and Be Prepared

 

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Skill Development – Building a one match fire

OK, Let’s build a fire!

The most common mistake when trying to build a one match fire is not having all your supplies gathered before you strike a match.

 

Supplies consist of three types of wood: tinder, kindling and fuel wood.

  • Tinder is very brittle, dry wood that is roughly the diameter of pencil lead and about as long as the spread of your hand from thumb to pinkie. Longer is better than shorter. Get a good double handful – you know, when you put your hands together finger tips touching and thumbs touching, like when they are around your snoring partners neck – that much is perfect.
  • Kindling is dry wood that is roughly about the thickness of your thumb. Be sure to collect a double arm load, imagine you are hugging your mother, about that much will do nicely, but always err on the side of too much. You want long pieces, about the length of you forearm from your elbow to tip of your middle finger (a cubit). Be sure it is good and dry because you’ll want it to break rather than bend it.
  • Fuel wood is larger pieces of wood that are anywhere from the thickness of your wrist to the size of your thigh. It can be bigger but those tend to require tools for processing. It is simpler to get what you can process by hand. Try to get pieces that are about the same length as your kindling. The drier the better, but you can place fuel wood around your fire to help get it drier. You want to get a pile about knee-high ready before you start because you can always get more later.

Now that you have acquired all your supplies, you are ready to build your fire.

 

Building Your Fire

Always build your fires in a safe location, and on bare ground far from any structures or trees that may catch fire. You are trying to get warm and potentially cook food and boil water, not burn down the forest or your shelter. If you have rocks available, make a nice little fire ring about the same width as your forearm is long.

 

Start by placing your pile of tinder in the center of you fire ring (assuming you found some rocks). Fluff your tinder so that you have a little air underneath it. Now, you are ready for your match. Protect it from the wind and make sure the match is burning well before you move to the tinder. You can do this by holding the match with the head slightly below your fingers. Now push the match under the tinder and hold it there as long as you can. If your tinder was dry, it will readily start to burn. Once you have a flame, be sure to roll or fluff the tinder over the burning part so you get a good portion of it burning.

 

Now time for your kindling! Start with your smaller pieces and just slowly add them by laying them over the burning tinder. Try to add them in a reasonably symmetrical manner (balance is good but not required). You are going to get a lot of smoke during this part. This is a good thing because where there is smoke there is fire. Once you have a good fire going with your kindling, you’ll know this because the smoke will have died down significantly, you can start adding your fuel wood.

 

When you are adding fuel wood remember the triangle of fire; Fuel, Heat and Air. Be sure not to smother your beautiful fire, feed it slowly, and add any remaining kindling to aid it if you run into trouble.

 

If you follow these simple guidelines and practice you should have no trouble starting one match fires and being the hero of your group.

 

NW Tips

A couple of insights from here in the NW where it tends to be a tad wet…

 

If you are dependent on a fire every night, start your day by collecting some moss. There is almost always plenty to be found and be sure it is free from insects. Then place some under your hat and on top of your head. This makes great tinder and if you keep it under your hat all day it will be nice and dry by the time you build your fire.

 

Also, I have found that quite often it is difficult to find dry ground to build a fire. So you can use either a large flat rock or build a platform from wet deadfall. If you take a couple of large pieces of wet deadfall place them parallel about a foot apart, then place 4 or 5 pieces across these at a right angle. Add one more layer like this, again at a right angle. Build your fire, as normal, on top of this. Not only will your fire be easier to start, the platform you build will dry out from the heat and turn into fuel.

 

Now, get out there and do it!

 

 

As always,

Stay Vigilant and Be Prepared

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Skill Development

Good afternoon,

We here at NW survival tend to spend a lot of time talking about all the things you need to have in order to survive an adverse or emergency situation, either in the city or the wild. That means actual skill development may end up taking a back seat. This week I want to talk a bit about the importance of skill development.

The truth of the matter is that no matter what you have with you during times of stress, they are useless to you if you do not know how to use them. Even something as simple as a first aid kit may go unused without the proper skill set. If we don’t take the time to learn what the appropriate response is to any given situation, our other preparation is for naught.

So, we are going to start a series of posts dedicated to Skill Development, not equipment. Starting with the basics, how to start a fire. I can already hear the grumbles… “I know how to start a fire!! You are wasting my time.” But let me ask you this, when is the last time you built a fire with one match? OR When was the last time you built a fire with no matches?

Then we will talk about knots, followed by land navigation (both urban and rural), and many other skills that I consider basic.

 

As always,

Stay Vigilant and Be Prepared

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