Bushcraft Fire Lighting: Birch Bark Fire | TA Outdoors

Description

A short Bushcraft video on how to start a fire using Birch Bark and a ferro rod. One of the best ways to start a fire in the rain or wet conditions. Silver Birch bark has a high content of oil and when the surface is scraped with a knife it produces fine dust particles and scrapings which ignite when a spark is put to them. Add some dry tinder to the birch bark once lit and you now have the basics of a fire. It is best to collect Birch Bark from dead Silver Birch Trees. In fact, the bark peels off much easier on dead silver birch as it is one of the last parts of the tree to rot, given it's water resistant qualities. I hope you enjoy the video and check out more Bushcraft videos below! - Mike

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Tags: bushcraft,fire lighting,fire,primitive,primitive technology,fire starting,lighting,ferro rod,birch bark,silver birch,bark,tinder,fungus,skill,technique,spark,wood,outdoors,skills,wilderness,woodland,forest,wild,camping,mike pullen,graeme pullen,ta outdoors,totally awesome outdoors

Video Transcription

welcome to Tony Olsen outdoors guys gonna do a quick video on starting a fire with birch bark now silver birch or Petula pendula the latter name is native to the UK it's quite common it's a deciduous tree and it's very noticeable because of the actual silver like silver looking bark to it on the outside where I am at the moment I'm in a coniferous forest but I'm right on the edge of a deciduous forest as well so there's there's lots of silver birch around and I'm not going to show you how to take the bark of the tree I'll do that in a different video but ideally you're looking for a tree that's dead on the ground obviously a more fresh that the fresher it is that's just died the better the Box the bark will be however with dead silver birch over time the bark is kind of the last thing because it's so proof so waterproof the bark is actually the last thing that will kind of rot the inside of the tree will work first and often with a dead silver birch it's very easy to pull the bark off itself now what I do is I keep all my kind of tinder and fire lighting materials in a tinder pouch leather tinder pouch and what I've done here is this is but I've collected over just whenever I'm out and about really and I've got the time I can go to the to any dead trees and pick up the silver birch and what I've done is I've just rolled it up in a ball there and I've just put an elastic bounded it band around it just to keep it together but you can put any sort of natural cordage if you want to to keep it in a bundle like that and I've got a mixture of kind of long big ones big pieces which are kind of my base plate I like to call it a base plate they're the ones that I'll make the scrapings off of and then I've got smaller thinner ones like this that I can then light from that initial flame let me show you how I get the fire prepared one of the most important things when you've which stock when you're starting any fire really especially in damp conditions you can see I've had a fire here before this is where I kind of regularly light my fire here at my camp is you need a good fire lay and all I do for that just create a raft so these are just for pretty similar size sticks to make it a flat platform and therefore that's where it that virata's then when I where I can start my file a and then what I'll do is here's the birch bark grilled up is I'll just take the kind of Mane that looks like a good one there as you can see it's pretty it's pretty curl up at the moment where it's been wrapped so I'll need to just go around it like this just to fold it kind of back on itself just to flatten it out really you want to be careful because you the old of the bark really the more easy it is to crack and you don't want to split it too much as you can see how to split it there but it doesn't matter too much it's just a personal preference really just to make it a little bit easier I can still get scrapings from that so next thing I'll do and a lot of people will use the inside of the bark I prefer to use the outside of the bark I don't know why I guess it's just a personal preference at the end of the day you're still gonna get the same material really that once you've started scraping away this surface as you would on this surface here you want to be the thing with silver birch is that it's got lots of natural oil in it highly resinous and it's great for fire lighting from a pharisee room rod but you just need to create dust pile first this is my this is the knife I'm gonna use it's just my normal bushcraft TBS boar bushcraft knife that I use it's a fairly big knife for this kind of work so what I'll need to do is hold it a little bit higher up the blade obviously be careful of your fingers just so I've got more control for my scrapings and I'm just gonna go with the grain I'm gonna go against the grain that way because I'll split the box I'm just gonna as you can see now it's starting to pick up some material and I'm just gonna keep going with the grain and you can start to see that resinous redwood below that I've made a bit of a split there so I'll bring that material down a bit this way you've got to be careful you don't flick the you know one flick it all everywhere because this is all important stuff you've got to just gently scrape away make a nice dust pile

as you can see building up a good flush file now all I need to do is put a Pharisee run up to that and it should take light fairly fairly quickly this is birch bark is one of the best methods of fire lighting in rain or wet conditions it's one of the best ones purely because of those not that oil that in that bark it's so good for a lighting from a Pharisee and rod obviously a match would take hold much quicker but not all of us will carry matches with us and obviously when it's raining and things like that you may need a Pharisee and rod so what I'll do is I'll just sweep this dust pile over to there a bit and I'm just I'm just gently scraping towards me I'm not actually scraping that way I'm only scraping towards me just so I can keep that control of that dust pile obviously if it's windy you're gonna want to try and do this in a pretty sheltered area because any kind of gust of wind will push this pile away now obviously when you are when you've eventually when I put a flame to that put a spark to that bundle there that's going to go up that's going to go up relatively quickly so I've got some extra bits of thin bark here which I'll just place on top to help catch light and then you want something a bit more flammable as well to keep it going so what I've got and what I'm quite lucky with here is I've got some dried Bracken some dead Bracken which I've which is abundant in this woodland and I've also got my twigs over there to then get the fire going okay so I've got my bundle there I don't if you can see it this is still quite curled up this this would say you may not be able to see it now first thing I need to do is just to kind of clean my Pharisee and rod a bit just to get a good strike from it so I know that's ready to strike because I don't want to make a mistake and knock this bundle everywhere now you can strike from up above and you may get lucky with a spark but to be honest I find placing your Pharisee a rod at the base of the bundle just gently and then just push down and as you can see there's a bit of a flame there there we go place a few more on top because it burns relatively quickly as you can see it's crackling away this is that resin in there get a few bits going as much as you can and then here's where now at this stage I'll come in with some dried Bracken which will go up fast as you can see Braca start to take and now that fires well away but the Bracken does burn quickly so just get a bit more on there get my dried twigs place that on there put a bit more Bracken on to draw that flame through the twigs like say and that fire is now gonna be well away it doesn't have to be difficult again I can place another bit of dead Bracken on top to draw that flame through those twigs to try and light that fire it dries out the sticks as well at the same time and the benefit is is even when you're going out on daily walks and things like that you can you can find these birch box you can find a bit of birch bark dead birch bark and get fired

you know just collect it you can just collect it over time which is what I've done here and then it makes fire lighting in the rain much better because you've got a piece of dried birch bark then and ideally that's what you want is dried birch well see that raft is now allowing oxygen to get underneath that fire as well if you've made the fire straight from the floor

the chances of air getting through it's much Slynt much slimmer really or reducing the chance of the oxygen and air getting through it so by raising it up on a raft you've then got a lot more chance of the oxygen getting through that fire and it keeps it going and keeps it burning for much longer Birchbox also quite recognizable from the net length of cells here which are there you see it more on all the trees but they're basically the gaps the splits in the bark and that helps let off the gas lets the tree let off the gas so just interesting you can is quite easily identical data fireball on a silver birch that lenticels there there's another native tree in the UK that's very similar to silver birch and it's called the Dorney birch and that is also very similar it's quite easy to get confused with the - it's very white the bark it's very white it's very distinguishable from other trees you want to be careful when you're taking off or do another video on actually taking the bark off a dead tree you just use a knife it's actually very simple you just need to be a bit careful when using your knife but as you can see I've rolled these up into a ball and I store these these are nice and dry now these have been stored for weeks now in my tinder pouch here and it's great I can just keep them in a ball put a band around them wrap them up you see I've got the chart ins in there as well pop them in my tinder pouch and they're ready to use next time straight away they're nice and dry and they'll start a fire really quickly