Welcome to the essential guide for mastering the art of campfire preparation and execution. Whether you're a seasoned outdoor enthusiast or a novice camper, understanding the intricacies of fire site preparation, establishing a woodpile, ceremonial fires, fire lays, and advanced lighting methods is crucial. Explore the comprehensive insights below to ensure a safe, memorable, and -filled campfire experience.
Your wood fire needs 3 different kinds of fire material:
TINDER: Material that burns as soon as it is touched with a match. It should be in pieces not any thicker than a match, but longer. Wood shavings or fuzz sticks, small twigs (especially from evergreen trees), bundles of tops of bushes or weeds, pieces of fat pine or thin pieces of bark (from dead trees) make good tinder. Beware of light material like grass or leaves that flare up quickly but have little real substance and burn out too quickly to catch anything heavier on fire. You may want to store some of your tinder in a covered coffee can to keep it dry.
KINDLING: Good dry sticks and twigs graduated in size from pieces just bigger than tinder up to pieces as thick as a thumb, and from six to twelve inches long. Larger pieces may be split for kindling. Kindling must be thin enough to catch fire quickly before the tinder burns out, but large enough to ignite the larger fuel. Sticks should snap when broken. Dead branches from the lower limbs of trees which are still standing or are off the ground make excellent kindling.
FUEL: Fuel is the larger wood that keeps a fire going. Good, firm pieces of wood graduated in size from pieces just bigger than kindling up to good-sized logs, depending on use. Fuel might be charcoal or dry, seasoned wood found on the ground. Wood that crumbles is rotten and will just smoulder and smoke without giving off heat when burned. Don't use it. At some sites, it may be necessary to bring fuel with you.
The Woodpile must be set up OUTSIDE the 10 foot fire site. Sort the wood by size. Sometimes the woodpile is stacked on two parallel pieces of wood to keep fire material off the damp ground. Use a tarp or plastic to cover the woodpile at night and during rain.
Avoid green or rotten wood. To burn well, firewood needs to be dry and split. Try not to ad any wood after you light the fire, it takes away from the program and makes the fire harder to put out. The idea is to let the fire slowly die down as the program nears its end.
The focal point of a campfire is the fire. You need a fire that lights quickly, burns brightly, and lasts only as long as the campfire program. NEVER LEAVE A FIRE UNATTENDED AND NEVER LEAVE IT TO BURN OUT BY ITSELF. Having a fire includes the responsibility to ensure it is safely lit, properly maintained, and thoroughly extinguished. Before you light the fire, you must have on hand the means of putting the fire completely out.
You can use several types of fire styles for a campfire.
The pyramid firelay starts with a bottom layer of 4-6 inch diameter logs. Add subsequent layers of smaller shorter logs. Fill the center with tinder and kindling and light the fire on a small platform of sticks near the top. As it burns, the coals fall in to the middle, helping the fire burn downward.
You build a log cabin fire in conventional log cabin style, starting on two large logs that serve as the foundation. Fill the space between the build-up with kindling. Without this fill, your fire will burn too quickly. The opening at the bottom allows for a good draft.
DO NOT USE CHEMICAL-REACTION STARTS OR HIGHLY FLAMMABLE LIQUIDS! These are unpredictable and can lead to serious burns or other accidents.
The fire can be lit in many ways, from simply striking and applying a match to using a fancy ceremony with more drama. For example, a lighted torch can be used to guide members into the campfire circle and then used to light the fire. Or try one of the following "magic" ways:
Build the fire around a tin can hiding a candle mounted on a small board. Attach to the board a string that a hidden helper can use to pull the candle from the can. Just before the campfire, light the candle. Its light will be hidden by the can. At the appropriate opening cue, the hidden helper pulls out the candle, which lights the fire "by magic".
Torches or candles carried by one or more bearers are also an exciting way to light a campfire. They are also a good "fall back" method in case one of the fancier methods does not work.
It's easy to fashion a simple torch from a wadded ball of dry tinder tied to a stick with binder twine. You can also surround the end of a stick with a large ball of cotton smothered in petroleum jelly and secured with light wire. Prior to the campfire, test a duplicate of the torch to make sure it will suffice. When the time comes, the assigned torch bearer ignites the torch nearby and ceremoniously walks to the fire lay. Then, he holds the flaming end on top of or into the fire lay, depending on the type constructed. Leave the torch on top of the fire lay.
Wrap several matches with very thin picture or copper wire and run the ends to a hot shot or car battery. At the appropriate cue, connect the wire ends to the battery terminals. The electric current heats the wire and ignites the matches. Be sure the battery is kept safely away from the fire.