How to Light a Campfire with Natural Materials and a Ferro Rod

Description

I head out into the words to make a short video showing you how I light a campfire using natural materials found in the woods. I also brought my Dad along with me for some theory time at the Bushcraft Camp!

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Video Transcription

hi guys welcome to ta outdoors and this is going to be a short video I'm actually at the woods here with my dad by the Maine bushcraft cameras you can see behind me this is really a quick video on how I like my campfire out in the woods first thing first guys is I don't want to burn the forest floor all these dead pine needles here these are obviously flammable and twigs here this could run the risk of damaging the forest floor and I don't want to ruin the environment so I need to clear an area and remove this moss and get down to that soil layer and underneath this is actually gravel but it's really important you starting campfire it's clear that area first and clear quite a big area if that was the size of my campfire I then need to clear at least two or three times the size of this area to allow for the ash when it blows off the fire all this soil here is very dry and it can be flammable so I need to go even further down you might not have to do this in your area but I need to go further down to where the actual soil layer is and there's clay and gravel below it it's going to use a stick to dig let's go and see the tree roots you can see now where I'm at so I was already starting to get the darker they go that's the layer I want to get down to that that dark layer so if I compare the two in my hands there's the peat on the right the light brown this is quite dangerous to light the fire directly on top here's the soil the dark black almost here on the left and that's the layer I want to get down to and if I keep going down I'll get to a gravel layer well we've dug down there and as you can see here's the dark soil and I've actually hit that gravel layer because there's loads of stones here now so I know that it's safe to have a fire on this part the next thing I need to do is go and collect some firewood starting with small twigs and then slightly bigger sticks but my five area my fire pit is now ready [Applause]

so I've just pulled down this this is a deck piece of dead standing point when you're starting a fire it's best to use dry wood around where I am it's dead wood a lot of deadfall here and it just makes fire lighting easier if you use green wood fresh green wood it's going to smoke a lot and it won't light very well so now I need to process this down to make my fire lay and what I'm going to do is cut about three pieces probably about a foot in length I'm just using this support log underneath the log that I'm soaring just to raise it off the ground so that this sore point here doesn't pinch if I had it flat on the ground like that as I push down with this blade it's going to pinch my blade and I won't be able to use it so blessed to get another log fit sticker raise it up off the ground and that way I can put pressure this side to open up that gap more so I've got my three sticks there about a foot long and what I'm going to do there probably an inch and a half thickness is I'm going to batten these with my knife so you don't have these max it's placing my knife in line with the middle of the stick but leaving enough room over here because that's the area I'm going to hit so I'm going closer to the it's either a toil or a coil part of the noise and then I've got this area to hit keeping it all nice and level I'm also on a solid platform here at my brush craft camp a nice solid log if I was doing this on this on the street and the ground it's very soft and springy and it wouldn't cut through the log as much hey guys I'm not whacking it I don't need to smash it clines quite soft and as I hit the noise downwards like that it tends to point down you push down with your arm - then lever up again like that

come this way hope you guys can see that and there we go then there's two this is quite has quite a twisted grain to it well it's a straight grain but where it's dead and walks in the heat it's a little bit twisted but that's what I wanted to do is expose the wood like that so they do that to the other two and then I've got my fire leg so got my split sticks here just put them with the inside facing up this works twofold really it gets the fire going a bit quicker because this inside of the wood is very dry and it's also where the resin is you can see under the pit of the wood there but it's also where most of the resin will be and you're exposing it to that but it also works by allowing air flow and oxygen to come underneath it which in turn should make your fire light a lot quicker so file a is actually a really important thing also great for when the wood is really wet if you split the wood like this then you expose that gray part in the middle which is going to be the driest part of the wood so there's my file a I've done the fire pit area the next thing I need to do is go and collect some twigs so this is ideal for the twigs that the sort of diameter twist that you need for when you first start a campfire so I always say about pencil thickness or you know the fit the diameter of a pencil should be nice and clean to snap when you snap it so they get a nice clean break any excess kind of twigs I pull off and I still keep but I'd like to keep them all in line so and I'd make these about 30 centimetres long so like my fires are usually in the area that I'm at I'm at here are usually is silver birch bark this is a dead and rotten silver birch tree or but to the pendula in latin birch is quite unique because it rots from the inside out so the bark is one of the last living things on the tree but it's also packed full of resin so the SAP inside can also be very good for you and you can make there's birch beer his birch sap beer birch sap syrup there's lots of things you can do with the SAP in the springtime but this time I'm just harvesting a bit of the bark it's a dead tree anyway and I can see that it's peeling already here and I spilled some earlier what I do is with my knife

to score a line across the trunk then along and this is just to gauge an idea of the kind of square flat platform that I need and then just gently I sliced my knife underneath being very careful because I'm not pulling I'm using my fingers as all I'm using is the pressure of my fingers because if I pull now an ice comes towards me so I'm just letting the bark up and I'll get under the first few bits making sure that it's free and then after that but to put my knife down this should peel away like that say yay and then I have I can rip it off at the bottom here a nice big flat platform to work from it even though that inside is damp and wet this outside part of the bark is where all the resin is and I just need to scrape a dust pile of that bark and it should take a spark from a Ferro rod so what I'm going to do is using the blade of the knife is go with the grain this way not that way across the grain but with the grain I'm not putting too much pressure down but just scraping and you can see the change in color of that bark already it's a lovely light brown orange color and that's the resin as part of the bark and I'm just going to make a dust pile here the dust pile being really fine shavings of the birch bark itself a very common way of lighting a fire and you can see a real dark piece of resin there the bigger you get your dust pile the longer it will burn for the better chance you have of your fire lighting however obviously it takes more time so what I'm going to do guys is I will place this probably like that and I will light that pile there I'm just showing you this before I do it because it gives me more time to explode explain the reason I've got a thicker log up here this is for a brace it's called a brace and what this does is as I as that might for the flame I'm going to grab my twig bundle there okay which is just a fistful of twigs again pencils centimeter thick and I'm going to place them on top of the brace like that so much easier for me to show you what the fire is not lit that means that the bottom of this twig pile will not be touching

the flames and the base of the birch bark here if it was it would stop the oxygen flow and the flame would almost be put out I'd be smothering the fire so I'll show you what it's like from a side-on angle so as you can see from the side here when there's a flame lit in there there's plenty of oxygen this brace is allowing all that air and all that oxygen to get underneath and make the flame rise through the twigs it's much easier for me to show you now while it's not lit and then you'll see it done when it is lit following this I'm then going to use twigs and sticks now onto what I would say sticks that are about the thickness of your thumb okay and once that's lit I place these in a teepee fashion like so and then that allows the flame to climb even higher through the fire which burns it which basically means it reaches through all those twigs there by pointing it up and it just makes the fire burn a lot faster it's probably one of the fastest ways to get your fire game so let's try it so for this one this is generally how I do it most most of the time it's just mine the back of my knife which has a 90 degree spine here and it's tough hardened steel and a Ferro rod make sure everything's within arm's reach my twigs are going to be there okay for they're nice and close okay so I've got everything nearby and I've also peeled off a bit of thin birch bark there which I'm going to use once that's lit I'll get on like this part as well just to prolong the fire a bit longer the flame say

okay and I like that part get that lit then get the twigs on when you can see that oxygen getting underneath and it climbing through the twigs at this point you don't need to rush much just build the twig layer up don't need the other sticks just yet now I can start to make the teepee and you can use this is where the brace comes in handy because you can use the back of the brace to help make that teepee shape the fire is certainly going to burn now but it's had its most tentative stage now what will happen if the flame will climb through quite quickly but you're going to need to add oxygen by blowing at the base of the fire just to get that flame roaring and catch all that water life now it's just the case of continuing to add those twigs in the teepee fashion until you get a good better coals and then you can add but I would say forearm size logs any bigger and then you're looking at a long-term nighttime fire but today we're just using this to boil some water so what I've done geysers of the fires now going what I'm going to do is make a simple pot hanger to hang my billy can from and boil some water for a tea there's really I'm going to make a cabin notch on this to hang the pot hanger from and you can actually do it with a saw I could carve it with a knife but it's actually relatively easy to do with a saw and not about it's just over halfway through to sticks out there and then another much an inch to the right of it and try and get this to the same depth as the other one and I just lean to the side and it should there you go pop out just get under there again with the saw blade and there you go a nice neat knotch I could tidy it up with a knife but to be honest I don't really need to that's made a nice flat cabin notch for the bail arm of my Billy counter to sit over all I need to do is make a rough point on the opposite end down here this is already really been done but I can just point it off this is where I snapped it and just pulled up for dead bronc I can just paint this end up here and that will help it to go around okay everything is cutting away from me it's soft ground here so don't need to be super pointy that will probably do so the fire is still going of course my pot hanger what I need to do now is get some water in my Billy canvases you gdl routine I do obviously the more you fill it up the longer it's going to take to boil I always leave a bit of room at the top for when it bubbles and then this has a fixed metal clip on the end let's fix it to play alarm up like that otherwise if it's locked down to the side as you go to try and get it you're going to burn your hands near the fire [Music]

okay so we're done with the fire I've let it get burned down now to just with not even embers really that's just smoking one of the most important parts of lighting a fire in the woods is putting out I wouldn't just leave it like this never leave a fire just like this a it looks really horrendous and it gives us outdoorsmen a bit of a bad name unless it's in a proper fire to area of course but if you're on your own other words I wouldn't leave it like this and and also it's dangerous for the forest floor and I'm using the same spike from my pot hanger the state just to dig in down some holes because that's where the the heat and the embers tends to go down I should be okay because this has been literally a 20 minute fire so it won't even be that hot down there but this is what I do anyway when I put the fires out obviously then have to use this stick you can you taste it punch some holes that's it more the min it's a simple case of I've spread the embers about and now I always pull around the edge of the fire first because that hopefully would stop it spreading if it was and then pour all over the rest of the fire now I sister cases spreading about Leave No Trace as they say and there you go now I've left no trace it looks like there was no fire there in the first place

and now I can go away happily knowing that the forest won't be caught alight it's all very well like the fire like that back in the day what do we use when we were kids 14 13 12 we went out camping that's right guys a quart of kerosene some matches and some very fast running shoes no joking I'm joking don't use any of land more stuff but of course we have used it as kids but I gotta say this stuff is really really good at suburb park I don't do the smarty road thing I'm going to take a lot of so I certainly recommend it is key so a little ziploc bag to a sealed bag and take a lighter for safety

I take mine even when I go fishing we can get safety matches the old school this box is probably worth a fortune don't take these matches cuz sometimes these boxes will get soggy and they agencies try come on get them they won't strike get those redheaded worms then it cost a little bit more they strike on anything you remember the old cowboy films people like Clint Eastwood like the cigarillo strike it on anything your teeth a side of a piece of wood a woman you can get it going and then cuts the only ones like this they light like that that guys they still work but what you want to get long fingers birch bark is very very good alight in open it goes before my skin gets melted is popping and crackling how easy was that

look old school just made life simple but yeah you have to admit this stuff that's bird and this bits a bit damp look we didn't come prepared for this we just got some ones a little bit down but just lower it down get it hot two or three pieces in if you want it down first same same principle you want the flames to to climb up it heat rises and then away we go like this twigs on top head over the top other fire smoke masks on I love it here we go that birch bark some good stuff guys and you know what is free lighter matches fire rod what do you want to do get yourself some birch bark obviously this dries better is better but look ordinarily I would take some paper but if I don't take paper I've got the natural environment there and that's what I like matches there put them in a plastic bag regular lighter for backup guys we in a plastic bag everywhere I go fishing camping they go with me fires away oh I'll tell you well spells will human hair on the back of your hands so there we go guys you're showing that tutor to say this easy way of doing it we're going to cook on this we just had tea on the other one which one that shows you how easy was that guys we're at the end of towards the end of the video and traditionally when I'm here with my dad we do what's called theory time and we check them out the theory we throw it out there and hopefully you guys give us your opinions in the comment section nicely last time unless we have some incredible responses yeah really really good and if there's anything that's been on your mind stick in the comments section guys we try and read every comment know how bad your bank account is we don't want to know that yeah sticky make you mine what's the theory this wingwoman dick saw something that's really sticking in the morning right through this week always is an only saw this relatively recently but the camera goes everywhere with me is we all know the bees pollinate everything if they didn't pollinate everything we'd all know are ours we have no flowers you have no crops that's the end of the human race basically with insects as well of course that only talking about bees now here in the bees they want to threaten me I think it's what the honeybee is I think over here in the UK with it bees are on the decline mixed I'm at the moment in the UK is quite I don't know about the rest of the world maybe it's the same thing you guy do over here in the UK I certainly bees are on the decline this is what we call the honeybee you know which is yeah I see were making making hand all that be not the bump yeah they reckon that they could be virus or something they got who knows but what I had with two things

last year I managed to film the back end of the year some bumblebees they're usually the great big words of everyone here big-ass mother you get those around the world I find them less aggressive I'm not going to pick one up I pledge it but that I find them less aggressive but I film them and they've made I don't know they just drilled through the ground and I got film it this will show you so we coming up in a second they've drilled through the ground and they go through this one hole you can actually see them flow in and disappear through the hole I don't know how deep they go underground

but is this exclusive to the bumblebee the English bumblebee or is in common place for bees to act in this fashion that actually drill through the ground and go under the ground because I thought if they went underground they might actually be you know I pray for some other species a predator could get in there but then this year when I was actually painting the outside of the house I found yes another honey bee it was a bumblebee again but not in the ground this time is inside my house not quite like bumblebees but these ones people if you watch I've found a cracking system they've got and it must be bizarre because if you watch here as you can see on the film the bees come in they land they go about six seven eight inches to a foot and they could easily take off near the hole but they don't they follow this little road and pathway now if you watch these bees doing it what I noticed obviously always I'd finish painting by then I got extremely bored was the fact that they only pass each other on the right the bees going into the nest were on the right as you can see on the film going up and the bees coming down would go the opposite direction is almost like a road then one wondering because they are we shall we say driving on the right are they American bees oh are they American bumblebees and they're on the wrong some of the strangest no but what I'm wondering is are washes for like half an hour cuz I have to go get the camera there's still there's you're easily distracted and easily distracted he's always know fishing is a wandering all bumblebees

perhaps blind and only hunt or scent feeders

and they're following a pollen trail from the legs these sacks on the B I likes collected pollen from the flowers going into that exactly they're being dragged along on the ground to give them a zone to move in on because they didn't just fly out the hole they they were literally like a road following this landing let's say I want to say - two or three feet away from the hole in my house where they were going in and then they call they would not rely on how I fly out of the hole they would not take off until they got well away for this and they actually had a where mark and I wonder if this sort of where mark is the collar on a lace

what do you think about it pretty much never seen that before I'm in it I've never ever seen that before now I have to admit I do see a lot of bumblebees crawling most of the time I see honey bees flying yeah a lot honey bees bumble bees I definitely see crawling on the floor most of the time I see a bubble we as it's crawling on the floor sonic bees well is it fell or it's drunk yep um too much too much pollen making honey I don't notice but as a theory for you guys yeah Allison I don't know what's he called is yet an AP wrist what's that make a really special it could be specially so I don't I got no that's not as well I think the specialist is an is it an ApS or is that somebody who studies orangutangs okay either way guys please let us know your thoughts yeah some of you go out and do some research and we're all trying to learn something yeah yeah that's that's the aim of these videos really as we try we try and educate you guys but getting across the enjoyment factor or just getting in the outdoor it is called the Tony or some outdoor show a PA outdoor yes so let us know your your opinions they might not be right but it doesn't matter because sometimes we get some really interesting opinions anyway well thanks very much for watching the video guys if you enjoyed this episode please check out our youtube channel called TI fishing which is obviously all focused about fishing we do fresh water fishing fly fishing so the fishing the bait sea boat loads of different types of fishing regular uploads on that one computer vision yeah and also we release a free digital fishing magazine every two months called the awesome angler so do go and check that out as well thank you very much for watching guys you

Written on 01 June 2017.

About the Author

TA Outdoors

Bushcraft, Wild Camping, Wilderness Hiking Trips, Solo Overnight Camps, Shooting, Hunting and Backpacking. My dog joins me on some of the trips. His name is Jaxx.

My name is Mike. And I'm addicted to adventure...

Check out our other YouTube Channel TAFishing: https://www.youtube.com/user/TAFishing

How to Light a Campfire with Natural Materials and a Ferro Rod

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