>>2039600Best make a fire for the conditions you find yourself in, but here's a few general tips:
- gather all the tinder and fuel you need before you light anything
- gather sizes ranging from toothpick to wrist thickness, then split/quartered logs, all of it as dry as possible
- don't take wood laying flat on the forest floor or from water - it'll be too wet
- take standing dead wood, dead branches still attached, or anything dead that is off the ground, held up on other trees/branches
- cut with a saw rather than break if you can, as it's less harmful to living trees
- lay out a bottom platform of flat pieces if the ground is wet
- lay your fattest half or quarter log horizontally as a wind block, and as a long-burner
- build up one other side at a right angle to the big fat log as another wind block
- build a teepee style, or firework style, so the flames lick upwards along the length of the kindling as they would naturally
- don't compact or overstuff the structure, as you need airflow around the pieces of wood
- only build up a small stage first, and add bigger pieces once the flames are going strong
- there should be airflow into the bottom as well
- shave or whittle shavings of wood from the dry centres of logs to use as the initial fuel source, leading to small twigs, branches, and split logs
- trying to burn lengths of wood without splitting them is harder than if you split them open - no big deal if everything is dry, but super important if it's wet - so if you find sticks/twigs aren't lighting try splitting them open to expose the fibres inside and not the bark
- practice a lot
- don't hurt yourself
Good luck, Anon.
