How to Light a Fire MasterClass

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Video Transcription

are you doing this is Mitchell Canadian survival school today we're going to discuss the paradox of fire and how to overcome it stay tuned you

so the paradox of fire of course that means that the greater your need for fire the harder it is to obtain it during adverse conditions when you need fire the most you have more variables to stop you from getting it of course so there's a few things that we can do to overcome that paradox try to give ourselves a greater chance to make fire in any condition thunderstorms may be nice we can die today blizzards

yes hurricanes

you name it now a lot of them have to do with understanding what fire prefers it prefers dry places it prefers impossible warm places it prefers the ability to climb as it burns it prefers the ability to burn through material that is split exposed to plant fibers not the outside of plant fibers like on a twig twig burns great but the outside of it is a thin layer of bark and the inside is where the wood is so split wood or carved wood increases the fires chance to burn through let's talk about a couple things that we can do first thing is we can put a raft of sticks down very simple just take three four five sticks whatever you want to do and just lay them down we about to build your fire we've all done that it works great gets the fire off the cold ground especially during snowy conditions having a raft of sticks a little base of sticks to start your fire on really gives it a huge chance because it takes it up off the damp ground or the cold wet ground whatever the case is and as that burns that's also fuel so now the fire actually has extra fuel underneath it so fuel on top fuel on bottom and your embers really get concentrated and created quickly now also understanding properties of wood makes a big difference if there's a wood near you that has volatile oils in it that's fantastic

that will help burn examples of that would be pine or spruce anything like that or birch might be wet it'll still burn also the understanding of soft woods and hardwoods makes a big difference to soft woods burn quicker easier expend their energy really fast so they're good to get your fire started after your fire is established it's already burning your flames are foot tall and it's trying to eke out it to its existence against the adverse conditions then you start adding medium and hardwoods to it to give it that good strong heart to carry forward now when we get started with tinder and kindling and all that you also want to take advantage of fires preference for the inside fibers of wood that's usually why I make curls or feather sticks when I light my fire curls and feather sticks exposes the dry inside of the plant and if there's any resins volatile oils exposes that as well brings it right out in the open it also gives the fire something with a very small amount of mass the wood is very thin as it's curled and feathered it's very thin so it wants to burn very easy doesn't have a lot of mass it takes a flame quickly and a flame shoots up you put two three four five feather sticks on a fire depending on how bad the conditions are even to makes a big difference up to five within a few moments your flame is over a foot tall roaring now it's up to you to harness that and add more stuff to it to grab that and take it to the next level because those feather sticks they don't have a lot of mass so they explode with energy and then so that's one trick using the raft is another trick so you have your base underneath you have your carved feathers if you can find it find some wood that you can use to carve down make feather sticks or make curls put a big ball of curls on top of your initial ignition makes a huge different fire explodes okay so that's a couple ways to do it also obviously using small mass wood like twigs works great for that next stage and so on so making sure that you follow all these rules really makes fire a lot easier to get even with the paradox when it's really hard to get building into a teepee fire lay also greatly increases your chance because fire now has a chance to climb into more fuel it's in my opinion one of the best ways to start a fire it's naturally designed for fire a nice teepee shape the fire just wants to keep growing into the rest okay so so far we have the platform we have carved wood curls and feathers right we also have twigs and all that proper steps and understanding soft woods first then going into mediums and hardwoods after and then of course there's using the log transition technique

where you get a log started as soon as possible I've gotten log started immediately on my initial burn it's very easy to do you just lay a log and each side of your fire as it's going and then a log across you as you put it to the back you just put it towards the back and roll it forward until it's basically touching the fire and you see if it's steaming off then you pull it back a little bit and give a one inch gap so it can let loose all of its moisture and not impact the fire negatively or if you see that the fire sticks to it and is now climbing up it it's ready to burn so you move it right up to the fire and you're already starting to burn logs once that gets going you can just lay more stuff on top after you're good to go that will burn for a long long time so now we're talking about logs sometimes we need to take down dead standing wood saplings or trees and obviously you take them down forever you can split it if you can use a fee crotch to bucket into smaller pieces

or you use your axe you saw whatever you have as always ways to process wood if you have to you can take one of those logs and crank it down into curls a big piece of it use that and now the log is smaller because you've carved half of it off now it's a half log you can get started with that as well before you transition into logs you can put that there that helps and also put on with your knife to get smaller pieces there's all kinds of different ways to break down wood breakdown fuels something else that carries a fire forward after it's already established and gives you more burn time without burning away really fast

other than logs is basically the null null roots of these trees so after you take down a sapling you can rip up some of its roots section and I find everything works it can be pine roots can be the pine root section it can be the whole root section it doesn't matter you know

root we'll just crank away all night and they'll probably be some left in the morning

pine tends to burn a long time as well because of all the oils and the fat wood that's naturally in it so taking all these things into account it really allows you to overcome the paradox of fire sometimes out during a full rainstorm or a snowstorm I'll set up my tarp

well not sometimes it's kind of like every time I set up my top to get myself a clean workspace rain is pouring off the sides I'm not getting wet and where I'm going to build my fire isn't getting wet anymore I then build my fire it's protected and we're good to go my fire is protected from my top underneath I miss your cooking and relaxing doesn't matter how bad it's raining so I just want to discuss a few ways of overcoming the paradox of fire we have building a platform for our fire to sit on we have making curls and feather sticks and understanding soft woods medium and hard woods using them in a proper way we have volatile oils we have also understanding tender bundles to some tender bundles about to mention this burn faster than others you know like grass tender bundles yes got it put some curls on there you got to use them quick or they gone if you use bark tender bundles they have a little more substance to them like cedar bark things like that they'll burn longer that tinder bundle will burn longer before it goes out footik spends all of its energy it's made of more more dense materials tougher so you can also use that to your advantage as well during adverse conditions you can design your your fire pit with the platform you can design what type of tinder bundle you use you could design how much curls you use and of what material you can design how much how much twigs you use on top of all that I mean it just goes on and on and on and what type of fuel and how quick you get into a log and all of that and it really doesn't matter the situation I mean I've made photo fires done boozers doesn't matter but you it does matter if you want to overcome the paradox of fire to understand all these variables if you don't they're going to eat you alive and you're going to have a hard time or fail at making fire when you need it the most as we mentioned the native survival school I do appreciate your time have a great day take care