Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting tinkering with fire starting materials & techniques

Bics also do not like cold weather. Plus fire steel's are just freakin cool.

This is a fire starting technique everyone should learn. Duct Tape is a fire starting material. Always keep a roll handy in your vehicle or hunting pack, it fixes about everything �but few learn it is a fire starter. It�s waterproof, too. Tear off a foot or more, and wad it into a ball, place it on an appropriate surface (a flat rock is good) and light it. The glue is flammable, and a round wad melts into a puddle of sticky gel-fuel that burns until the puddle is exhausted ash. A twig tipi of wet wood will burn when you set a rolled wad inside and light the tape; it will dry the wood as it ignites it. Remember it creates a puddle of gel-fuel that can be moved for best position (also think portable rock candle used for light, too). Duct Tape could save your life if stranded in the winter or in a situation where a fire is desperately needed �don�t forget the Duct Tape!

the original bic lighter with adjustable flame was a fair fire making tool... Not great for true cold weather, or high elevations, but for most purposes, it was OK...

the current bic lighter has too small of a flame, is hard to keep burning for any time without burning fingers, and is durable enough for most purposes, but still subject to breakage...

as lighters go, i prefer the zippo, which will burn long without getting too hot to use... it provides plenty of flame to ignite about anything, and is exceedingly durable... I know guys who have used the same lighter for over 40 years.
the zippo does require some light maintenance, and is not completely weatherproof... i have yet to see a completely weatherproof mechanical lighter.

the F.C. firesteels are impervious to any condition that i can imagine... and so easily used that i tend to use them even when a mechanical lighter would suffice...

Part of my approach to backcountry living is to use more primitive means of living whenever possible.

Instead of taking an LED light for the tent that only serves one purpose, I take a USGI surplus Pink Lady candle. Around camp, using that, with kindling that you usually get from splitting Lodgepole, it can make hot fire quick fast and in a hurry like. I've usually got some Strike Anywheres along in the Fireworks too.

Some pics of fatwood or resin saturated fir.

First, a chunk of heavy pitch-saturated fir I cut from a snag that was mostly red rot. Door frame gives a size reference. It is so heavy I do not think it would float, though I did not test that. It is totally dry and non-sticky. Any pitch balls etc. on the outside will crumble.





Close up of the inside of the same pice of wood. The outside is weathered.



After cutting the large piece into 4 or 5 inch long chunks, I split it with a big knife into slabs as thin as possible. The straight old growth grain splits easily going one way or the other so try it each way. I think it is from the top end of the tree toward the roots that splits straight without splittling out to the side, but never can remember.



I wrap a small handful of these slats in a paper towel, put that bundle in a zip loc and carry it always with my small fire making kit. The paper towel protects the zip loc from being shredded by the sharp ends of the wood, and it also burns. A large bundle of this stuff is under the seat of my 4x4 and another in my cook kit tub, etc.



Scraping the resin wood with a knife blade or sharp rock produces a fuzz. The fuzz scraped up in this photo ignited on my fourth spark stroke, and I am not very good with the fire steel yet. In previous tries, it ignited on first or second stroke. The slat is less than 1/16 inch thick and burning fuzz starts the slat on fire, which then works like a magnum match.

WetFire fire starting tinder.

Dry solid cube....non-toxic.....5 year shelf life.....burns at 1300 F......cools instantly....easy to ignite.
Cabelas.....Bass Pro.....Amazon.....many other stores.

http://www.reveresupply.com/ust_website/videos/wetfire.wmv

I've had a block of fire starting cubes from Coghlans or someone like that under the seat of my 4x4 for several years and haven't used it much. Saving it for a real emergency! My mix of fatwood sawdust and shavings in a flammable binding was a concious copy.

For the time and money invested, buying fire paste or such fire starter blocks is a better way to go. I've enjoyed working with this pitch saturated wood and have given it as gifts to selected friends and family who hike and hunt. I over-focus at times, but this is a relatively harmless fad!

Below is a block cut from the long piece shown leaning against the door in one of the pics posted earlier on this thread. It shows the first few slices or splits of wood from the block. I used a knife with a nine inch long blade and press down on both the handle and the back of the blade near the end to get such tidy thin splits. Light pressure and rock the blade a bit at the start.



Some fir fatwood slats stored in plastic jars. If I didn't give it away I'd have a lifetime supply on hand. My two sons heat with wood, on the wet coast, and I gave them each a large shoe box of this stuff. Their kids love it for starting fires.

Okanagan;
I trust and pray that this finds you and yours doing well this fine and very still morning my friend.

As a bit of proof that even aging canines can be taught some new tricks, I changed the way I typically split my fatwood to the thinner and wider wafers such as you've shown.

I split a couple shoe boxes full yesterday after I'd moved firewood to the house and rebedded the bottom metal on the 98 that went crazy on me this season. As an added bonus the garage smells much less like an abattoir now.

Oh, I even finally found a use for a knife that was given to me by a consultant that a few owners back had in to work. He gave me this knife from Lee Valley;

http://www.leevalley.com/en/shopping/AddViews.aspx?p=54891

I must confess that I'd found little use for it until I read your post and thought the hacking knife was built just for splitting fatwood!

Oh, I'm going to try your fuzzing the stick and using the ferro rod right on it too - as well as Dan's very cool tip for modifying a striker.

Thanks to you sir and to all who have contributed to an educational thread. As always you and your family are in my daily prayers.

Dwayne

Who'da thunk it? I carry duct tape wrapped around my hiking poles and canoe thwarts. This is good to know, thanks.

Yep, I gotta try that.

Dwayne, you have the ideal knife for splitting fatwood! As for other uses ...

I used to carry a thumb diameter stick of fatwood and would shave off slivers to start a fire, then accidentally discovered on a straight grained piece how well it splits. The thin flat pieces ignite easily.

There has to be another use for wood so pretty.

P.S. Was browsing some old threads and realized that DanAdair posted about scraping up fatwood fuzz to ignite by spark, and that's probably where I got the idea.

Might be he did. But this is an excellent topic for discussion. Glad you brought it up. E

I've played with fatwood very little. For 3-4 day trips, I like Coughlans fire paste. I feel it's the highest BTUs for the weight as I'm not allowed to play with Napalm anymore. A guy could spend an afternoon sourcing some I suppose, but that's an afternoon I could spend fishing or hunting.

But primitive living skills are where my studies have been lately, because in 17 more years when I semi retire, I plan on spending 7 months in a wilderness being a total land hippy.

Just took a second gander at that WetFire stuff and it looks superb, especially since it does not evaporate like Trioxane when exposed to air. Thanks for the link!

The Wet Fire Tinder is always my emergency go to fire tinder.

Every, pack, coat, vehicle, etc., I own, has a small waterproof storage tube in it with cotton balls soaked in Vaseline and a magnesium rod with steel(piece of hack saw blade). The containers are the type ya find at marina/boat stores that have the screw off lid with rubber gasket, that float. Works for me!
G

I almost always carry wet fire. One tablet can start several fires

Or two or three can get pretty wet wood going.

Ed, wish I could take your wilderness course, though it is not likely for me to manage that. As the title of this thread indicates, I've tinkered and learned while doing but like all self taught people, we never know what we don't know!

Of more value than my pics of cutting up fatwood is your field instruction on how to find such wood in the wilderness and how to use it there.

We got a fresh tracking snow within the past two hours and if it doesn't melt, I might be tempted to get off of my couch and venture out tomorrow. If so, hope to survive enough to return alive!

Best of the New Year to all on the Backpack Forum!

Good Thread..

I have only shot one elk but that's exactly what we did..The fire was nice to warm up to every 10 minutes or so.. The pack out was only about a mile to the truck so we would stock the fire real good so it was still burning when we returned for more meat..

I have been using some fire starters I bought at Cabelas about 10 years ago, they work great for backpacking and emergency use but I am about out.. I will be using the cotton ball/vaseline method as well as a fire steel once they are out..

I used to use 35mm film canisters. For you youn'uns, those were small plastic cans with good lids used to hold these round pre-Civil War thingies called camera film. When 35mm film became extinct, I switched to large pill bottles. There's no way a lid will ever come off of one of those...whether you want it off or not. If your emergency involves cold hands, they'll be a lot colder before you get the lid off to start a fire. It might be easier to carry a couple tracer rounds for your rifle to shoot the lid off and start the fire at the same time.