/out/ - Outdoors » Thread #204744

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Anonymous Tue 01 Oct 2013 20:11:17 No.204744 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>204767 >>204770 >>204801 >>205437 >>205558 >>205614 >>205851 >>206271

Hey /out/. I'm a sheltered suburban faggot who doesn't know a tent from his own asshole. Last weekend a friend and I tried to make a campfire in some nearby woods (followed all the safety precautions: made a fire ring, had a bucket of water, built it near a stream, away from brush).

Anyway, it went like this
>Lit dry leaves and pine needles in the middle with butane torch
>Tried to use them to catch fire to some twigs and larger branches and shit
>Didn't work
>lol no fire

How do I build a fire? And more broadly, how can I learn to into /out/ with no prior experience?

Anonymous

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Anonymous Tue 01 Oct 2013 20:15:47 No.204747 Report

Quoted By:

/out/ pls

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 01 Oct 2013 20:31:38 No.204753 Report

Quoted By:

Maybe you stacked it too loosely/ with too much air. When you build a fire you want everything close and tight so the heat can move between the twigs and not escape.
>but it needs air
It will get air. Also blow on it.
As for learning /out/, I think you're doing it right. Just go out and see what problems arise and learn to solve them. It sure beats lurking 4chan to learn which knife you should buy.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Tue 01 Oct 2013 20:55:47 No.204766 Report

Quoted By:

OP don't bother with the whole leaves and needles thing, they're more a pain in the dick than people like to admit.

whatcha gotta do is collect yourself a nice handfaggot (pic related). when first starting-out grab the thinnest twigs you can find and don't be lazy, get a bunch of them so they're nice and thick, like thatch.

no need to tie it off like in the pic, just hold one end with your hand and light the other end with your lighter/torch/thermite/matches/etc

once it's going good (like the wicked witches' broom when she tries to burn the scarecrow) lay it down in your fire pit and gently beging to stack wood onto it

start with smaller twigs and work your way up to sticks. once they're going you can start to build a cabin-style fire or teepee or whatever you want over it to ensure a long night of warmth and crackle

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 01 Oct 2013 21:01:26 No.204767 Report

Quoted By:

>>204744
>2013 and not using more pencil sized kindling stacked as a tipee. WTF?

Please youtube, "make a fire".

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 01 Oct 2013 21:04:49 No.204770 Report

Quoted By:

>>204744
This is my method.

Find a load of light twigs, no thicker than my little finger. I want a faggot of these the length of my fore-arm and the thickness of my wrist.

Break this into half, and stack in a triangle. In the centre of this, i want dry grass/light twigs a similar thickness to dry grass/balled up newspaper.

Over the top of this construction, more twigs the same thickness as my little finger. Lay them straight across the paper.

Before lighting the paper/light twigs/dry grass, i'll find a load of logs, roughly the thickness of my forearm but never any thicker. This is my main fuel. After lighting the paper, i'll gently blow to increase the heat without destroying the fire, which will ignite the timbers across the top and the sides. As the fire grows, lay more timber across while ensuring it isn't choked (hint: If it smokes, it's choked)

If it starts to smoke more than burn, blow hard into an air gap.

Hope this helps OP

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 01 Oct 2013 21:46:43 No.204801 Report

Quoted By:

>>204744

this fella asked the question WAY too many people were afraid to ask.

Thanks, OP. I learned some tips today.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 03 Oct 2013 01:17:58 No.205437 Report

Quoted By:

>>204744
dave canterbury youtube videos
or ust youtube /out/ related shit youre interested in doing

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 03 Oct 2013 05:07:03 No.205558 Report

Quoted By: >>205679

>>204744
>dry leaves and pine needles

Waste of time. Leaves don't kindle worth a shit. You're better off doing what some of the other anons are saying and grabbing a handful of dry twigs for starter. If you can add dry grass to it, even better.

For anybody interested a very nice firestarter can be prepared ahead of time by rubbing vaseline into an unrolled cotton ball. Things can burn for a minute or two and get whatever sticks lit provided you build the fire properly, and a whole handful of them doesn't take up much space. I first learned this back when I was a kid and we still had those little plastic camera film canisters to carry them. A plastic bag works too, I guess...

Anonymous

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Anonymous Thu 03 Oct 2013 07:15:31 No.205614 Report

Quoted By: >>205823

>>204744
> butane torch

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 03 Oct 2013 13:06:28 No.205679 Report

Quoted By:

>>205558
This is bad advice. Some leaves do burn well. You need to know your local vegetation.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 03 Oct 2013 18:07:56 No.205823 Report

Quoted By:

>>205614

>dat gif

on topic, BIg-ass ziplocks from dollar stores are great waterproofers.

Also Skivvie rolls.
http://www.survivalmagazine.org/survival-forum/showthread.php/3386-How-to-make-a-Grunt-Roll

Cleaning the rust off a knife, steel wool.

ANtiperspirant on your feet stops them from sweating. I swear to god. I called bullshit until I saw an ex-reservist do it in Basic.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Thu 03 Oct 2013 18:52:53 No.205851 Report

Quoted By: >>205853

>>204744
>with butane torch
Don't do this, for starters. Your inner-Californian won't help you start campfires.

Your problem with your fire was probably the leaves. Dead pine needles can be fine tinder because they contain oily (and flammable) resins, but leaves are generally poor tinder because they retain a lot of water, even when they appear dry.

Instead, as others have mentioned, use dry grass, papery bits of wood (like if there's a tree nearby with papery or fibery bark), very thin dry twigs or wood splinters, dry pine needles, and anything else very dry and thin. It must be flammable enough to catch fire from a single match. Some people bring cotton balls from home to help with this. Collect enough until you have a fist-size ball of loosely-packed material. This is your "tinder nest."

On top of your tinder nest, you should stack some thin kindling. Look for dead and dry sticks no thicker than your thumb, preferably thinner. I would collect roughly 30-40 sticks of this size, if you want an exact number. Stack them teepee-wise on top of your tinder nest, being careful not to crush it, and leaving plenty of air spaces. I would bury a few larger sticks as support, and then stack thin sticks on top of these supports.

If you've done it correctly, you may continue placing nearly full-sized firewood on top of your kindling, as long as everything is allowed to stand up teepee-fashion so that air can get down into your tinder nest at the bottom

Pic related was lit with a single match.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Thu 03 Oct 2013 18:55:10 No.205853 Report

Quoted By:

>>205851
For fun, heres' the same fire catching.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 03 Oct 2013 18:57:22 No.205854 Report

Quoted By: >>205863

Building a fire is actually tough. You have to keep blowing at the little flame, and lighting it back every time it blows off. Until it catches
I personally haven't gone camping a lot. But what I know I know it from going /out/ with people who already know some stuff

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 03 Oct 2013 19:12:50 No.205863 Report

Quoted By:

>>205854
It depends on the quality of kindling. With wet wood, or green wood, you absolutely will need to keep blowing on it. If it's dry enough, it will actually catch really quickly. Depending on where you live, you might find wet wood more often than not, but if you can find it, dry wood is amazing for fires.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 04 Oct 2013 02:45:48 No.206045 Report

Quoted By:

The failsafe, tl;dr method of building a fire is to make a little 'Lincoln Log' structure out of the thinnest, dryest twigs you can find. Stick your tinder in the middle and pile on more little twigs as the flame grows.

Where most people fail in making fire is they misunderstand the mechanics of a flame. A flame is only an expression of the presence of heat -- the heat itself is in the ember, and that's what you want to worry about protecting, ventilating, and building. That's why leaves and paper are such shit tinder; they don't make an ember. Dry grass and dryer lint do.
If a fire has an ember, blowing on it helps. If it just blows out, there was no ember.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 04 Oct 2013 17:54:15 No.206271 Report

Quoted By: >>206274

>>204744
wood doesn't burn like you think it does. heating the wood releases hydrogen and other combustible gasses, and then those burn.

building a fire means getting that process to sustain itself.

tiny sticks are easy to heat up to the point where they outgas, but they don't hold much woodgas in them. so you use their limited capacity to heat larger sticks, then larger, then larger, until you're up to the logs. so if your flames are going out before the wood turns to ash, use smaller twigs... and if your fire is consuming small stuff too quickly, put larger twigs on.

your fire also needs air, so even though you want to add wood close enough for the flame to spread, leave gaps for oxygen to be drawn in. you can accelerate the reaction by blowing on the fire, but consider whether you're blowing oxygen in or blowing woodgas out -- the right balance depends on the size of the sticks!

practice before you go out. you can do this with a junk / thrift shop frying pan outside in your driveway. try to get a small fire of pencil-sized sticks burning (you'll need to start with shavings, then toothpick-sized sticks and work up).

you can use other stuff like cottonballs soaked in vaseline, but these are more for starting fires when it's wet out -- if you can't start a fire under optimal conditions without these kind of aids, you might be screwed if the weather turns bad.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 04 Oct 2013 17:56:05 No.206274 Report

Quoted By:

>>206271
>practice before you go out.
this is for babies. where is the fun?

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