Frontier Fire Seminar from the Camping and Woodcraft Class

Description

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

now is we're going to start to have a discussion about fire because fire and shelter obviously are very important aspects of woodsmanship in general and I think that in my mind today a lot of people that are in this survival industry missed the boat when it comes to the importance of resources for making fire and how to utilize those resources and the reason I say that is because a lot of times now you see even in classes like our basic class although we do show you guys and talk about the lighter is a very important asset how to recover that lighter if it gets wet things like that we concentrate really hard on feral rods and feral rods are a great resource but they're they're also an expendable resource okay just like a match just like a lighter just like anything else they're expendable they only last so long and the problem with feral rods is from what I see from a lot of people we try to correct this in the basic class but if it takes you 20 strikes to start a fire every time you hit that Ferro rod how long is that thing going to last you a lot of people will say this thing's got 20,000 strikes okay well you struck it forty times you get that fire how long is it going to last you so obviously the bigger the Ferro rod the more materials got on the longer it's going to last but most people carry a fairly small feral rods and I don't consider that a sustainable way of making fire now there's ways that you can improve on that and hopefully you'll take that away from this when we talk about flint and steel because in my mind we always teach at the Pathfinder school that your first fire is your emergency fire that's the that's the fire that you had to get started for some reason and if you're going to expend a resource to get that fire started because you didn't have anything else that's you're expendable resource fire that's your match that's your lighter that's your open flame device that you can use to get that fire started but that fire has to be lit perfect especially if you're talking about a match but even with a lighter remember every time you flick it and the longer you hold the button down the more that resources can expending so anytime you build a fire lay that thing should be so perfect that it takes almost nothing for it to be a sustainable fire very quickly my rule of thumb with cigarette lighters is five seconds on the button

if your button if your hands on that button more than five seconds you screwed up if your Ferro rod if you got strike it more three times you screwed up all right Clinton steel is a little different Clinton steel you can be a little bit less perfect with Clinton steel because first you got to find the right part of the rock the steel is going to last forever I got I got stealing my pal traitors over a hundred years old still strikes as good as did dams forward okay so then things last forever none of us are going to live 100 years so that's all your life resource the trick to it is understanding how to capitalize on a resource and they could work the best for you and the best way to make that happen is with char cloth or charred material char of some kind and if you take advantage of that and you make char with your very first fire even if you're using a Ferro rod it will only ever take one strike

to get that char to light and then you can ignite your fire from that and that's what's important to understand the other thing that's important to understand is there's only one absolutely renewable resource for starting a fire that is forever and that's it right there okay and if you got char got some money it doesn't even have to be strong son or a midday Sun perch are all right so that's the key now if you can do other things with your material besides char it to make it highly flammable I'm going to show you one right here real quick I'm going to show you well we'll deal with the Sun real quick on this and got a small magnifying glass here but it works great well as we got some Sun here this is a piece of rub cloth and this piece of rub cloth is made with pyro Dex gunpowder and cloth okay that's instant

this is going to burn till you put it out or till it burns all that cloth up so it's a long-term ember that you can use within your fire that's going to give us the flame let's start stubborn tender okay and all it took was to make that which was just a resource of a little bit of powder and a little bit of cotton cloth okay and like I said that one was made with pyro Dex prior to action $12 a pound at Walmart dad to make yards and yards of this stuff okay for 12 bucks if you use black powder real black powder to make it with it ignites fairly easily with a flint steel yes maybe asking how you process and we're going to show you because you're going to make it yourself okay okay you guys are all going to make it so I'm going to show you let me talk through some of this ignition stuff first and then we're then I'm going to show you how to make it don't let me forget okay now if you if you use and remember what stuff here if you use black powder the real stuff to make that rub cloth with which is what this is made out of you probably can get back to ignite with flint and steel and I got this is what I call my show-and-tell training set here because it's a giant flint and steel set so like when I got kids and stuff and they don't know how to do it they can't get it right or if people are sitting far away and I'm trying to show us show how to do this it's easier for people to see this than it is a little rocking a little steel so we'll put this dude right here we'll get this edge right up there exposed on the side just like we would if we're using char cloth we'll try to throw a couple sparks up on that thing and see what happens when it bounced up on top of it whoo I thought I heard Clint catch

again right there boom nothing to it and that's against a piece of char cloth that's going to burn till it burns completely gone alright so that's a pretty simplistic way to give yourself a traditional surefire source because long as you get those sparks off some and you keep that dry that thing is going to go and this stuff can be made in like two minutes I'll show you that here a few minutes okay so what the lesson to take away from this part of it is that just like I said don't ever use your action against a saw don't ever use your Flint steel thing as a magnifying glass because it's there and it should be especially if you got we would not collected that chart Punk would today remember that okay so this is chart punk wood right out of the woods out there from today and these pieces right here are the center pith of that plant I showed you guys that hibiscus okay so I'm going to lay that dude right there get my magnifying glass back out here probably already burning I can't see it hmm

oh yeah it is oh yeah it's big giant barn can you guys see that yep alright again the resources free I threw it in my first fire alright that I started with my match or my lighter whatever the case may be I instantly made char now I've got enough of that char I mean it wouldn't take but half of that I can break that thing in half use half of that start my fire with and conserve the other half I want to in my tin right so children material is going to be your best bet to ensure your next fire now so kind of some of the mentality we teach in our basic classes the first fire should be a no-brainer if you can't start an emergency fire Sydnee be in the woods the next fire is when you got to worry about because you've expended I'm urgency resource maybe you're down to one match which is what you guys are going to have today to start your first fire is one would match okay and you'll have to build your fire lay accordingly so if that one wouldn't match we'll give you a sustainable fire that you can make char with for your net for the rest of your fires okay the other thing that I want to show you who's got a buck Oh laplander on them toss it toss it over here this right here is a piece of crock Cal Poly pull or fungus off the trees the horseshoe fungus horse of fungus you see that grows on the side of the trees looks like a half a plate everybody know what that looks like seen it before in the woods okay they break that stuff off throw it in your backpack and save it alright because you can take this stuff install into it just like this this thing right here this one piece right here we're probably like 30 or 40 or 50 fires okay just sawing to that stuff with your saw and get yourself a pile of dust and then take that pile of dust and put it together like this it's a good old magnifying glass back out

I lost my sundae for a second in there I was going by the tree thank you you see the smoke coming off of that what's going to happen with that there my son just went away got to be faster this time and come back what you want to do is just let that em or build a little bit

tell us about yeah big around is a pencil eraser and from there this letter sit that's going to grow into one giant Ember just like you made from a bow-drill fire okay then you scrape that thing up on your I flick dump that thing your bird nest and dot your coal to start your fire with again it's a free resource get out of the woods cut in chunks throw it in your fire kit that like I said that fire is going to be made off that one slice with that saw and that's what that thing will sit there and burn until it goes out until it's going and there ain't nothing left with black it's just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and coagulate so really there's a sense it's showing you what I want to show you is charcloth I want to show you char cloth with flint and steel here in a minute because I want to show you the proper way to do that we let that burn while we're doing that so now let's just take a piece of charred cloth okay I got some in this tender here love this 10 by the way this thing came from a dollar store it's just I teach in it had tea in it but for some reason had this inside cover in there ice punch tall on that but now I got a chart in a place to hold my magnifying glass

in 110 just makes a perfect little kit so let's take a piece of char cloth out of here

and I generally put mine together with I usually tape mine up with a piece of electrical tape just to keep it from getting wet or anything all right so what you want to do with this stuff is if you are striking sparks into what will do that in the moon let's talk about char cloth first so take your fire steel got about a hundred fire doesn't really matter which one I use take your fire steel and you got a smaller piece of Flint we grab a smaller piece I what you want to do is you want to find yourself a good sharp edge that's got it that's a little bit beveled away from you is the best way to do this okay and when you work with foot steel what I see the biggest mistake I see people make is they try to the wait flint and steel works it is to help you is that you're removing iron particles from the steel that spontaneously combust when they hit oxygen adding energy trees so this rock the one thing is rock is doing is cutting this material it's removing my new part particles of this iron off of this thing from the high carbon steel so think of that as a thin slice that you're trying to take off of this material so when you're striking this thing instead of going banging into it like I see a lot of people do what you want to do is get that edge add a little bit of an angle and strike the edge like that

see those sparks coming up off of there how they're coming off of that thing I'm barely nicking that thing you don't have to hit it hard you don't have to hit it fast you just got a nickel and then if you take your fire cloth your char cloth and put that right over that spot with a spark we're falling to anyway with your thumb and just kind of hold it there you should be able to bounce parked right up on top of it and depending on the piece you have you have to manipulate that a little bit your fingers depending on the piece of material that you're using or the piece of rock that you're using to get that thing just in the right place but if you get in the right place that won't take you very long take your time and nip you Leyton that instead of messing with striking it a hundred thousand times oh I did a minute ago didn't see it that's the hard thing about Flint steel is hard to see when you hit it during the day because it doesn't glow all right so that's all you want to do with that it's pretty simple but remember to don't smack it slice down on it just real glancing blows just like that's all you really want okay and you'll throw plenty of sparks now you can see what this thing is done here while we've been sitting here this thing's grown into this and now we would just take that and put that in our bird now just to put together like this it's still burning just like that the important thing about a bird nest is and this is not a real good example of one this is just a quick and dirty nasty thing here but the important thing is that you have a combination of coarse medium and fine materials and you can create that by just processing it down I feel a little dampness in this too I probably had something to stuff my pocket we picked up that was wet today but with the number you should be able to have that longevity to dry that stuff out which is an advantage you're not going to have with a barrel rod necessarily not going to dry the material out when you create an ember with your Ferro rod off a piece of char material you gave yourself the advantage of having longevity that you wouldn't have otherwise to the parallel to the driver right to open flame that by you well not necessarily fair enough its marginal material if I ride might not do nothing but if you got marginal material in your nu if you've got marginal material and you have an ember in there as you're blowing on that Ember you're drawing that material out because you're heating the bundle up always when you when you get your tinder bundles you notice what I just did when I got that tender bottle flamed up I immediately turned it over as I was going down with it I want that heat to rise up through the bundle I don't want to sit there and burn from the top down I want to burn from underneath up okay so I always turn my turn to bundle over since I drop it on the ground all right so now we got Flint steel down we understand the bird nest process