The Upside Down Fire

Description

How to set an 'upside down' or 'top-down' fire. Though it doesn't seem like it would work, if used in dry conditions the upside down fire is a highly efficient, low-smoke, and clean-burning fire. A great fire to set if you want to be able to start it and then attend to other camp tasks as your fire creates its own 'heart' of hot-burning coals.

Visit http://rewildu.com/classes/ for unique educational opportunities in rewilding, wilderness skills, mindfulness, martial arts, primal fitness, homesteading, and more.

Opening music is "Artifact" by Kevin MacLeod. He has awesome Creative Commons music at his website, http://www.incompetech.com. Be sure to donate to him to support his awesome work!

Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,fire starting,upside-down fire,Camping

Video Transcription

hi I'm here in front of the latest shelter that we've built a tree wild University and today I would like to show you a way to start a fire that the first time that I heard it I did not believe it would work in fact it's completely opposite of how we usually think of laying a fire it's called an upside down or top-down fire and here's how to do it as for usual fire I'm gonna select sticks that are of different sizes so I've got my my pick of big ones all the way down to nice nice thin little whisker thin pieces of of wood that are very easily gonna take place I begin at the bottom with my largest pieces of wood there's some advantages to this fire it an upside down fire tends to not be very smoky as it starts unlike a teepee fire where I feel like I'm often having to blow and blow and blow because that teepee unless it's very well constructed it cuts out a lot of the oxygen this allows plenty of oxygen and theoretically when I light it at the end I should be able to light it at the top and step away my bottom layer my largest sticks it's okay if they have some spaces between them it's okay if they don't this can be a solid layer but now as I begin to move up I want to leave a little bit of space for things to fall down in between sticks the principle of this fire is that the things on top burn and they fall down and trickle through it tends to be very beautiful as it burns downward and again it's really nice because if you take the time to set it right you can light it and step away and tend to other things I'm gonna continue with my next set of sticks again leaving some trickle down space in between at this point I start to think of laying down a few thinner sticks intermixed in between the at about pencil-thin right now and that is just going to add to the efficiency as it burns down as I start to work with really small sticks they can start to fall over the edge so I always at this point start to add some thicker ones to act as a boarder it's also going to funnel the fire and the ashes everything that's falling down down through the center this final layer is very important to really get a nice lot of nice thin very flammable material those are the main little pools that are gonna fall down through the matrix and create a really beautiful fire for you finally you need a really nice mixed material tinder bundle and that you're gonna set right on top after you start it on fire and then watch it burn now layer by layer it's just going to burn down through and this point on it'll probably be fairly smoke-free nice and no maintenance

that is how to do an upside down or top-down fire give it a try let me know what you think you