Bushcraft - Essential Winter Fire Lighting Techniques

Description

http://paulkirtley.co.uk

In this video you'll discover essential fire lighting techniques that are simple, straightforward and reliable in cold conditions.

If your goal is to have failsafe firelighting skills in the winter, then this video shares some key skills that will serve you well, even in very cold conditions.

Bushcraft and Survival winter firelighting video with professional instructor, Paul Kirtley:

When I filmed this video is was minus 28 to minus 30 degrees Celsius (25 below Fahrenheit).

In particular you'll discover -

* the two key natural firelighting materials found in the largest

forest on the planet;

* which natural materials can be combined for great winter fire

lays;

* the key preparations and considerations you need to make for

failsafe winter fire lighting.

Oh, and make sure you watch right to the end for the deleted

scenes.... They're pretty amusing; well, as far as bushcraft and survival videos go, anyway :)

Hope you like it. Please post a comment under the video to let me

know what you think.

Also, check out my blog at paulkirtley.co.uk where you will find lots more free wilderness bushcraft information and advice.

If you are interested in bushcraft courses or wilderness expeditions, then please have a look a the wesbite of my bushcraft school, Frontier Bushcraft: http://frontierbushcraft.com

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Video Transcription

hi I'm poor Kelly from Frontier bushcraft I'm here in the northern forest it's about minus 28 degrees Celsius at the moment is pretty cold about 30 below Fahrenheit and whether you're staying in a heated tent or whether you're in an emergency bivy lighting a fire is a critical bushcraft or survival skill in this video I'm going to show you some simple and reliable methods of lighting a fire in the northern forest here in the northern forest I'm looking for two key natural fire lighting materials one is birch bark the other one is this lichen this lichen festoons many of the trees here look all around you and you'll see this hanging from the branches like a little beard birch bark is very flammable lights Easley contains lots of oils burns hot and burns long this is probably our number one fire lighter these two birch bark and lichen are your key fire lighting materials for this environment I'm going to show you how to use these materials in combination with other materials we can gather from the forest to light fires and simple and straightforward ways that will work for you every time here's the base of a spruce tree lots of dead branches in here lots of fine twigs and dead branches and you can see if I pan up the tree all the way up to the top there there's live branches up there and there's lots of snow on the branches but down here at the bottom they're protected by all that material that's above them they're quite dry there's a yes there's a bit of snow in there but they're quite dry we can break them off make that will make excellent kindling for our fire lighting that's a great place to look for easily collected kindling you don't need to do anything to process it you don't need to split it it's just there ready to take as long as it's nice and dry it breaks easily snaps off cleanly that's fantastic and this is what we're looking for see if I can do this camera will be a little wobbly while I do this but here you can see nice dry nice crack as you break it here a really good thin sticks dry and dead with some resin in excellent for fire lighting

what I've done here is I've dug an area a fire pit if you like where I can have my fire because unless you're staying for any a short while say having a quick lunch stop with a quick fire for lunch what's going to happen is when you light your fire it will start to burn obviously it's it's hot the heat from the fire will start to melt the snow and the fire will slowly but surely sink down into the snow leaving you up on the snow leaving the fire down there with not much heat getting to you so if you want to get the benefit from the fire and if you're staying for any length of time certainly it's worth the effort digging down to the ground here down to the ground you can see the snow behind me and it's about a meter deep it's about waist deep for me so is a fair bit of digging but definitely worthwhile if you want the benefit of a fire particularly over night and what I'm going to show you now is some techniques for lighting fires that are reliable and easy to prepare and easy to use first though I need to gather a few more dead rice things got all my materials ready here collected all those small sticks on the spruce tree and this technique really is very simple you don't need an axe you don't need a knife you don't need to prepare the materials you don't need to split anything or shave anything all you need is some form of ignition a match a lighter some sparks and that will allow you to get this technique go with no problem at all now even though I've cleared pretty much all the snow off the ground the ground still frozen there's a little bit of snow left there there's some moisture there that will be released once there's some heat so what I don't want to do is light my fire directly on the ground what I want to do is put down a platform of bed dry wood next I want to put down my my lichen I collected earlier so I've got in my pocket here there we go this is nice and dry now been drying with body warmth tease that out a little bit so they'll catch a spark and also the oxygen will get into it a little bit better and take my small sticks these are the ones I collected from the base of the spruce tree and I split these into two red bundles like so let me place these across each other on top of the lichen slightly in front of it on top of like so

now once the flames are coming through my kindling I'm going to add some larger stick thing and start with pencil thickness then finger thickness and then maybe a little bit larger after that you can see it's a very simple method of fire lighting all you need are right materials which are easy to find and easy to collect and some form of ignition and scar match or lighter any other form of ignition that you can think of get the light and going and then build a fire very very simple very reliable and a great one to know and if we want to have in the back pocket in case you need it and traveling in the Northland the second technique I'm going to share with you makes use of the birch bark that I collected earlier I took this from a dead standing tree and it peeled off pretty easily and this is a really really good fire lighter and because it burns really hot it gives us more options in terms of what we can light with it we can of course use it with the small sticks that we collected from the spruce tree we use lichen to light that but equally we could use birch bark and that would work very well indeed but as I say because this burns very hot we can light other things with it too so I'm going to show you a different option that you can use with the birch bark so for this method we're going to light some splints now you do need access to some sort of cutting tool so that you can split this out but if you can get hold of these then it gives you more options and again it works very well with the birch bark and that's what I'm going to share with you now as always we put down a platform first the grounds cold it's frozen there's moisture in there want some heat starts penetrating moisture will be released and that will hinder our fire so we want to get our fire up off that also this is dead wood that means this fuel at the heart of our fire and also because it's kind of like a little rack it allows some oxygen to get in and underneath the fire so it gives us all the elements that we need if you think about your fire triangle heat fuel and oxygen this platform helps with all of those so that's essential in pretty much any environment but particularly this one we want to get it up off the cold damp ground next I need to think about preparing my birch bark if I'm using sparks then I need to scrape it up scrape up the outer surface of the bark you get the fine dust and shavings that will readily take a spark from using a match then I just have to tear it up into strips that will easily light with a match so think about how you're lighting it and make your preparation

so there you have it two simple straightforward methods of lighting a fire in the northern forest in winter I'm Paul Kirtley from frontier bushcraft thanks for watching I hope you found this video useful here in the northern forest I'm looking for two key file ID materials one is birch bark and the other one is this like

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