FIRE!

Thanks to all of you who came out to our fire starting night.  We had a great time and sure did learn some good things from Bro. Braithwaite's expertise.

 

Wanted to share a few things we learned.  

 

We practiced using flint & steel to catch a flame on kindling, toilet paper, char cloth and some jute (similar to hemp).  Out of all of these the jute by far was the easiest to catch flame and start the fire.

 

When you use flint and steel make sure you are holding the steel correctly with the UP side facing up.  You need to do firm quick motion downward to spark a flame.  Pretty easy but takes some practice.

 

 

We made our own char cloth by putting some square pieces of cloth fabric in a aluminum container and puncturing a hole in the top of the lid.  We put it on the fire and let it smoke until it stopped smoking.  It was super stinky!

 

I personally think it was one of the most difficult ways because you have to really blow on that little tiny ember you get on the cloth to get a flame.  Probably a simple solution for an experienced fire started though.

 

We also did the steel wool and 9 V battery trick.  You need a small piece of steel wool and touch a 9 volt battery to it and you have fire.  You quickly add your kindling and start to blow on it until you get a flame.

 

Sister Lasenby did a great job starting her fire this way.

 

We learned a fire needs:  oxygen, heat and fuel in order to burn.

 

You need tiny pieces of dry things such as pine needles, sage brush twigs, small sticks to use as kindling.  This goes at the very bottom of the fire.  See in the picture above.

 

Then you need some tinder which are a little bit bigger than the twigs.  You can see them sitting up against the log in the picture below. 

 

Last you need some bigger wood for burning.  Once your fire is started it needs to have logs or bigger chunks of wood to keep it going.

 

Nice work ladies!!  We had a fire started and then we had a triangle made out of long sticks and lashed together with some twine.  We dangled a steel pot from our mess kit from some twin in order to boil 2 cups of water for our Mountain House meals.

 

We tasted Chili Mac with Beef - yummy and a bit spicy for kids.

 

And Turkey Tetrazzini which was tasty!  We were impressed they tasted so good for packaged meals like this.  A terrific option for 72 hour kits!

 

To make one of these meals you just add 2 cups boiling water to the package and seal it up.  It sits for about 9 minutes and then you can just eat it right out of the package or pour into bowls.  They have 2.5 and 5 serving packages.