Author of Be Ready for Anything and Bloom Where You’re Planted online course
If you missed the previous challenges, you can catch up here:
- Day 1
- Day 2
- Day 3
- Day 4
- Day 5
- Day 6
- Day 7
- Day 8
- Day 9
- Day 10
- Day 11
- Day 12
- Day 13
- Day 14
- Day 15
- Day 16
- Day 17
- Day 18
- Day 19
- Day 20
- Day 21
- Day 22
- Day 23
- Day 24
Today’s Challenge
Is starting a fire something you do frequently? If you heat with wood, you’re probably just fine. If you do not, it’s a skill and you need to practice it from time to time.
So today, practice fire-starting. It may sound silly to people who do it all the time, but if you don’t do this often, it may not be as easy as you think. When we first moved to our cabin in the woods, it took me weeks to get a proper fire going in the woodstove.
If you are an accomplished firestarter, try starting your fires with a different tool, like a fire steel. This is also a great skill to teach your children.
What is your favorite way to start a fire?
Besides a lighter or matches (the easy ways), what is your favorite way to start a fire? Do you start fires frequently? Share how today’s challenge went for you.
Making a spark
Use a cigarette lighter that’s out of fuel.
Use a firesteel that you’ve tested, along with a scraper you’ve also tested. There are some good videos on YouTube to help newbies over the predictable hurdles. Some firesteels are junk and don’t perform, especially from Walmart. Most are shipped with a non-obvious coating that must be scraped off to expose the metallic part that produces actual sparks.
Use an electrical lighter that produces miniature lightning between two metal posts.
If you’re a history buff, carry a real piece of flint rock along with a steel scraper. (We won a revolution with flintlock rifles.)
Making a flame
Use a cigarette lighter WITH fuel in it.
Use a little steel wool across 9-volt battery terminals.
Use a credit card size Fresnel lens in strong sunlight over dark colored newsprint paper, eg.
Better: use a 7×10“ Fresnel lens ($1/ea from Dollar Tree, or a little more from sciplus.com) all day long when there’s sunlight, with a much wider range of tinder.
Selecting tinder
Cotton balls with a little vaseline smeared on.
Cosmetic removal cotton pads, again with smeared vaseline.
Dryer lint. The slow way is from cleaning your home dryer. The fast way is to drop by your local laundromat in the hour before closing when the staff does their daily dryer cleaning. Volunteer to line their trash can with your plastic trash bag before they begin that cleaning, so you can collect all that dryer lint.
Junk mail, old newspapers, ads, etc.
Make very thin shavings on the side of dry wood, called fuzz sticks. You need a very sharp knife, or even a small wood plane.
Alcohol is a superb flame catcher as well as a good cooking fuel that stores “forever.”
–Lewis
Always carry a few batteries and a couple of small wires with aligator clips on each end, use the batteries, wires and steel wool to start a fire
Matches or a lighter and lots of corrugated cardboard.