Dakota Fire Hole Proper Construction and Use

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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

so you clear yourself a good five six foot something nuts if you got a lot of dry leaves around before you start and just kind of look at the ground and see what's way in there you might expose a route that you know is there just for clearing the ground now and then take a look at what direction your winds coming from if you're going to dig it Dakota fire hole you want wind going into that fire tunnel so we're going to make our fire hole here I just hit a roof right there I feel it or a rock want to find out here directly we don't need this thing any bigger than a couple three shovel widths a couple shovel which wide we cut through that root layer pretty easy with a decent shovel probably lift most of that out of there in one shot just tuck it right back to the back there just like it you got some rocks in here one root right there pretty good size looks like a water vine root let's cut through cut these out of our show yeah good shovel I'll have to worry about that either cut that right out of there suck it all right now just take all that dirt get it to the back now this hole that you're digging here is the biggest mistake I see a lot of people make as they dig that hole way too deep you want that hole fairly shallow if you're planning on cooking over it because you're trying to build up the better coals in there deeper it is thicker that better coals got to be to cook anything now we're going back up about a foot here right directly behind this thing and this is where we're going to dig our air channel right here we're going to leave ourselves about a foot of space in there we'll get another root just cut him out leave this right here in place if you can and dig from the other direction like I'm doing now leave that in there now you want to dig this at about a 45-degree angle through here just like this give yourself plenty aeration into that fire we're going to manipulate some of this dirt here in a few minutes right now just kind of keeping it off to one side

now this hole here like I said this is what we want our air to come from so this hole needs to be a little deeper than the other hole and angle it up just like this there we go a lot of small roots in there good shovel take care of a lot of that for you

okay that dirt out of your way for a minute like this and then coming in with your shovel start digging down like this toward out of the hole and that's rock right there detour me a little bit okay

remember I don't want this whole real deep I don't wanna get too crazy here I need draft coming in here be afraid to get in here and dig your hands clear that out

okay good draft Oh in there now now we can shore things up around the outside remember that layer of SOG we have a few minutes ago we first busted out of that hole I'll come back at dude here a second because that's we're going to use over top of this we're going to put this right here keep that area clean now come over here and grab this layer of sod that we had we're going to lay that right over top of this just like this we have Tim we'll get another layer somewhere else to put over that as well uniquely on a dirt that might caved in on you while you were doing things and then sure everything up just pebble down nice this is where your draft is going to come in from to get that fire going nice and hot and keep it that way right there's ones coming up from the bottom in there you can see daylight on the other side all right that's exactly what we want now we just need to shore things up and get cook irons on there okay so we've built a Dakota fire hole here and we haven't set it up to cook on it yet but we've got the basic construction down and I think it's worth discussing advantages and disadvantages of this type system because it's a very good system if you're going to use a temporary camp for a few days or if you're trying to leave a smaller footprint let's say in the woods that you are there or have been there the advantage to the disadvantage is first of all I guess to this is that it's labor intensive you've got to dig the hole you've got to build it up you've got to set it up properly and that takes a little bit of manual labour and a few calories burn to get that done on top of collecting firewood the advantages to it are that a it leaves a smaller footprint it's less noticeable B it's easier to control the flames of the fire and the coals of fire so not blowing all over the woods because they're actually in a hole you can't control how fast the fuel burns because you can't control the draft simply with a rock or a large stick in front of the draft hole so that you don't have it sitting up on the ground and open wind and no matter what blows through here at the mercy of that for how fast your fuel is burning it's also easier to control as a cook fire because of that because your coal beds under ground a little bit and you can regulate the draft it's not something that's sitting up here that when a high wind comes through heats the fire up when the wind dies down it cools the fire down or the cold bed or whatever the case may be so that's all more controllable with this Dakota fire pit as well so from a resource management standpoint from a footprint standpoint from a safety standpoint and from a cooking standpoint it's a great great fire the only disadvantage to it is like I said it's a little bit more labor-intensive to build than just building a fire on top of the ground but if you're going to be there for a couple three days it's a fantastic resource for you to have a cook now it's not going to be a warming fire it is a cooking fire something like this is not something you build out in the open to keep yourself warm and lay on the ground beside at night to go to sleep not that type of fire this is more of a cooking now the thing with these Dakota fire pits is that because you're feeding air from the bottom you can put that tinder bundle right on the very bottom of the hole and just start throwing stuff on top of it like I'm doing right now because you're feeding air or drafting from the opposite side from just underneath that pulse so now as you're throwing sticks in there you're really not starving it of oxygen at this point because the oxygen is coming from the bottom you can see how that force there from the bottom is pushing that heat at the bottom of that thing and forcing oxygens at the base of that fire just blowing that thing up I mean I it's a raging fire for what little amount of tinder I actually put in there to begin with and I've been just piling the fuel to it the building a coal bed all right so once you get that base fire going you can just add some thicker wood to that thing some fuel woods let that burn down into a bed of coals in the bottom of that hole and then you can begin to cook over it however you choose whether you choose to put a set of cook irons over it or hang a simple tripod over the top all right so now that we've got our coal bed built up we just got a couple sticks in here still burning snap those down and drop them in now we can drop a pot right down on top of that coal bed we still have fourth air coming in with the venturi effect driving that oxygen to the bottom of the fire that heat drafting upward and now we can drop a pot down on a tripod if you want to in a chain right over top of that fire or we could put a couple fire irons across here or green sticks and put a skillet or a pot directly over top of our fire and it's still right at ground level this is kind of what I really wanted you guys to see this fire is below the surface of the ground but it's being fed oxygen from the base causing a venturi effect to drive that oxygen to the bottom and drive that heat up that's coming from our draught hole and that's important to understand about the way a Dakota fire pit works and now we can do whatever we want for cooking depending on the apparatus we're using well folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the pathfinder school I appreciate you joining me here for this video today on the proper construction and use of a Chicago fire pit I thank you for your views I thank you for your support and thank you for everything you do for our school for our family and for business for all of our sponsors instructors affiliates and Friends I'll be back to another video as soon as I can thanks guys