Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What technique do you use to burn your firewood

Do you do the top down burn?

Or

Do you build the fire underneath the logs?

Mostly throw some logs on top of the coals from the last fire. Or start some kindling and put a couple of logs on top when its time.

Kinlin first open the drafts build gradual takes experience not to set off the smoke detectors in the entire fugkin house 🤣🤣

Heat rises

pitch helps

Heat or play.

From work I get compressed paper tunes 3"id, 1/2" sidewalls.
Cut 2" long, stacked in a metal bucket, pour a quart or so of kerosene over them.
They soak it up, are almost dry to touch, and burn hot for about 20 minutes.
One of them lit on the grates, throw split smaller stuff onto, then big stuff.
Close door and forget for 4-8 hours.

The same for yard fires, just no grates or door.

I turn the gas log lighter on, instant fire until the wood catches enough to sustain itself. I can’t imagine a fireplace without one. I had to hunt heart pine when I lived at home to help get one started. Some call it pitch pine. My neighbor had a small tray that had a porous rock, it soaked up kerosene. You put it under log rack. It would burn for a long time to help start a fire. I don’t know what it was called. It was made out of cast iron.


Looked something like this. This uses charcoal lighter fluid.

I tell her to…

Put another log on the fire
Cook me up some bacon and some beans

We use the same cardboard tubes. Have you noticed any after smell in the fireplace ?

Uh, I use kindling and newspaper and make a fire. It's one of life's easier chores.

I find it more productive and warmer to set it on fire in the wood stove.

Rake the coals to the right side of the stove stack the stove full of oak logs...keep the door open a crack until the logs catch fire....close the door and close the damper almost completely.....get a 12-14 hour burn get to sleep all night rake the coals good heat for 3-4 more hours do it again until spring....
Thats how I get a very long burn....usually only put enough wood to fill 3/4 full when it starts to get warmer....even 1/2 ....

Had a gas lighter in the fireplace at our last house and really miss having one. I think you could burn watermelons with it if you had to.

If starting from scratch we always keep a 20 gallon feed tub of sticks picked out of the yard or wherever. put them on first with a little squirt of diesel. Add some dry firewood on top, shove a little paper or cardboard underneath and light it. Fire readily goes up, doesn't go down very well.

My mother was born in the stone-age (1922) and couldn't build a fire. She would put the bigger pieces in and then try to get them going from the top with a splinter or two of fat pine. My grandmother always built their fires.

Why dick around like some Webelo??

Use a torch

Interesting. So basically the logs burn right to left 🤔 I can see how that would extend the burn time.

I think I will give this method a try. I don't have a secondary burn stove so this may work much better than starting the fire underneath the logs.

Best way to start a fire is to never let it go out. One year not so long ago it was so cold we had a steady fire in our Buckstove for over 2 months. And this is in the deep south during the terrible global warming we are experiencing.

My main question was aimed at how people control the burn for maximum heat. Not how to light the fire.

I have always used the bottom up method in the wood stove but I have been reading that the top down method is actually more effective and was wondering if anyone has ever tried it?

Fire!

It is certainly slower to burn top down. The best thing I ever did for maximizing heat was to do away with an open fireplace and insert a Buckstove with heat chambers and a fan to circulate room air. I now burn about the same amount of wood in a week that I used to burn in a day in the fireplace. When I would come in and start a fire in the fireplace the house temp would quickly drop several degrees. I'm not a smart person but I figure all that smoke billowing out the chimney is compensated for by cold air being sucked in from outside.

Anyway, my suggestion would be to get something with heat chambers, doors, forced air, and a damper.

If you want to sit in front of an open fire and have a drink all you have to do is open the damper and the doors (in that order).