Fire Making

Part One Fire I enjoy learning about how to be self reliant, and I think it would be cool to be a mountain man or have it as a hobby. I have read many manuals, and have experimented with their designs but here are the ways I have found them to work: Always plan out your trip before going out, so you can tell someone where you are so you dont have to get lost. If you are going out into the wilderness, I would bring a small but useful knife, some food like a granola bar or two, and water. These items will last you at least until you get rescued or until you find other resources to use. Another thing to do before going out is to look at a map of the area or know it well enough so that you know what way is the closest road, or human contact. The first thing to do if you know for sure you are lost, is to make a fire.

You should probably make it in an area good for a shelter too (make sure the area is semi elevated so if it does rain on you or your fire won’t get wet). There are more than a few ways to start a fire, but before you do any thing you should build something to put your ember or match in to put in the fir that you built. The first way and probably the hardest way, to start a fire is with a plow this method is when you carve groove on a piece of softwood and an example of that would be; aspen, balsa, birch, cherry, elm, mahogany, maple, oak, and walnut all those are soft woods then you take a hardwood shaft while pressing firmly in the groove move it up and down as show in the diagram. Next, you could build a hand drill which in terms of starting fire is easier than the plow but still takes practice. To build a hand drill, you need a spindle of hard wood and a lar flat chunk of soft wood.

You would take the spindle and put it in a small hole near the edge of the soft wood slab then take the spindle and spin between your palms until you get an ember to fall through the hole onto something to transport the ember to your tinder. the result should look like on the picture on left. The next and easiest way to make fire is using the bow drill method. This design is more complicated but is easier to start a fire with. First you need a pliable piece of wood one to one half inches in diameter I suggest a willow or birch branch.

Tie both ends together so it ends up like a bow. Use a rock with a divot for the bearing to go on top of the stick when you are spinning. Use a hardwood spindle and a soft wood plank to make notches in for the pilot hole so the spindle does not fall of the board. Next, you will wrap the string around the rope and push and pull the bow so the spindle is spinning in the hole (this takes practice)