I am no kind of expert, but the night i made my above post i went out and made a fire using the advice I gave. Temp was mid 30s with a hard blowing wind carrying a light mist...
It had previously rained steadily for 24 hours, ending about 24 hours before my effort.
my 16 year old and I went back out last night and did it again... 14 degrees, light variable breeze, and all wood coated with frost or ice, from the freezing rain/snow storm of the day before.
on my first fire, a few nights ago, i got fire with the first strike of my swedish fire steel into the vaseline cotton ball...
last nights fire, we got sparks from the steel, but they weren't hot/forceful enough, with the attached scraper, to actually strike fire... I picked up my estwing sportsmans axe and scraped with it... one smooth scrape and a huge shower of hot sparks produced flame... it took a minute or so for the cotton ball to become fully fired, so iwaited and then added a parrafin/cotton ball and one strip of inner tube.
as the added cotton ball and rubber began to burn i added 3 matchwood twigs, all covered in frost. the damp started crackling immediately. i added matchwood 3 pieces at a time til i had some small hot coal built up and some fresh matchwood drying/burning on top.
then i added my first piece of frosty pencil wood. the matchwood burned down around it and i had to add more matchwood still to keep going.
at this point i added yet one more paraffin/cotton ball, and yet another pencil wood twig.
the jump to pencil wood is a major effort, if you've got damp wood. it was easier the first night because of the brisk wind. i was sheltering the fire with my body and only had to shift position to allow forceful ventilation.
the second night, the winds were very light and almost calm... i almost hyperventilated blowing on those matchwood coals to coax flame enough to ignite the pencil wood.
Good post. Any wood that is frosty, damp or wet will need a good base fire to start combustion on bigger wood. Again if you have the ability to have a few pieces of fatwood anywhere from match size to pencil size it will produce a pretty intense inferno that will make the sustaining fire easier to maintain.
I have had a couple instances where I have shot an elk at below zero temperatures and the first thing I have done is get a hellacious fire going. One time I dragged a sizable pitchwood stump into the fire and then I had some intense heat that lasted for a long time.
