How to make a fire.

The most versatile survival tool is FIRE! If you are ever in a survival situation you will need a water purification system, a cooking system, some light, a means to craft, and heat. All of these things come in the form of fire! So you had better carry at least two ways to make a fire if possible and know a few ways to make one without a lighter.

First let’s look at some of the easier ways to make a fire and they are easy because you will use tools that may not otherwise be available. The first way is of course with a lighter and as simple as that seems there is a technique to it.

Start off by gathering some very fine straw or dried grass, even paper if you have it. Then gather some twigs and start placing quite a few of them together in a pyramid shape. Then some larger twigs stacked in the same way. Followed by some larger pieces of wood. Strike the lighter and let the flame catch the grass on fire. I know that one is pretty easy, but it gets a bit harder as we go along.

The next technique will be with a battery and a small piece of steel wool. If you have steel wool with you, then you likely also took a battery (a 9volt is best)for starting a fire. But, for arguements sake let’s say you didn’t. Well thanks to the ubiquitous cell phone you may have a back up plan with you. Yep you can use your cell phone battery. Much like any other method you want to gather dried up grass, twigs, larger pieces of wood first. Then take the grass or other fine material that will easily burn with a small flame and shape it sort of like a bird’s nest. Now take the steel wool and place it in the center of the birds nest.

You won’t need a very large piece of steel wool. I usually take one piece and rip it in half then spread it out a little bit. Touch the battery terminals(if you don’t know what they are they are the copper colored metal strips on the battery) to the steel wool and rub them around a little. You will see the steel wool catch fire. Simply blow on it a little bit so that the embers catch the dried grass on fire. Now quickly place this under the twigs and continue to blow it gently to allow the heat to spread and force the flames to grow. Once this catches the twigs on fire you should be good with a little care.

Another trick to start a fire with a battery is a gum wrapper and an AA battery. Take the gum wrapper and cut or rip it in half. The next bit will require some origami skills. You will need to fold each piece of wrapper so that you have two pieces that are foiled on all sides, except for a small bit on the end, which can be foiled on one side and dull on the other.

Place the two peices together with the two sides that have both foil and paper showign touching eachother, fold them together so that each side is touching both the metal foil and the paper of the other piece. Now hold one side to the top of the battery, and then the other to the bottom. The folded paper/foil pieces will combust and nearly instantly produce a flame. The trick is having your tinder ready to catch fire once the flame starts because it doesn’t last long.

If you happen to have a flashlight with you then you can easily make a fire with that as well. Just take the flashlight apart and get to the reflecting mirror inside the flashlight.The downside is this only works during the day and only when it’s clear and sunny. This works best if you have some char cloth, we’ll talk about that in a moment. Take the char cloth or dried grass and stuff a small amount in the flashlight’s reflective mirror at the bottom where the bulb was previously. Then angle the mirror to catch the sun’s reflection.

Once you have the rays in the right spot you will see smoke from the grass/char cloth. Gently blow on the smoking material untill you see embers. Take the material and place it in the middle of some dried grass and gently blow on it until you have fire. Once you do add it to the rest of your kindling and fan the flames till it catches.

Char cloth is easy to make and you can even make it while you are out in the wilderness. You only need a few pieces of cotten, a tin can like a can of mints for example. Cut or rip the cotten into small squares and place them in the tin can. Cut a small slit in the can for ventilation. Then make sure the can is shut and place it on top of an already existing fire. You will see a fair amount of smoke from the whole that you cut into the can. Once that smoke stops then the char cloth has been made and it’s done. Char cloth looks like little bits tar and catches fire very easily.

Bet you thought I was going to tell you to rub two sticks together eh? Well we will get to that in another post. Survival isn’t always about just using natural resources and you need to use anything you can to get by. Soon I’ll post how to make a fire with water, then we’ll get to the natural method using only what we find in nature.