Outdoor Life Prepare for Anything Survival Manual by Survival/Camping Page A
Authors: Survival/Camping
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covered. In a worst-case scenario, choose big dead branches and use your knife to scrape away the wet exterior.
Know that building your fire is going to take much longer than it would in dry conditions. Once you have a decent fire going, stack wet wood around and over it in a sort of log cabin. This will protect the fire from rain and dry the wood for later.
102 Get the Best Materials You Can Find
Whether your ignition source is a match, a lighter, a road flare, or a friction fire, you’ll need the same type of materials to get the fire started and keep it burning. The first material is tinder. These slight materials have a lot of surface area and little mass, so they release their flammable gases more quickly than stouter materials. Tinder should always be fine, fluffy, dead, and dry, and it should come from the plant kingdom. Hair, fur, and feathers do not make good tinder. Instead, try dead pine needles, crunchy leaves, crumbly dead grasses, and the fibrous inner bark from dead tree branches. Next you’ll need an assortment of very slender dead twigs, wood shavings, and/or split wood splinters for kindling. These work best formed into a cone shape around a core of tinder. Add a few finger-thick sticks on the exterior of the cone and it’s ready to light near the bottom. Insert a lit match, or light several spots with a lighter—and watch your hard work pay off with flames.
103 Make Char Cloth
Char cloth uses a process called pyrolysis (burning without oxygen) to turn ordinary cloth into a fire starter that’s great to use with flint and steel, since it only takes a single spark to ignite. Here’s how.
STEP 1 Make a small hole in the top of a tin that closes tightly.
STEP 2 Fill the tin with scraps of cotton cloth (it needs to be all-natural; no synthetic fibers).
STEP 3 Place your container in the coals of a fire. Smoke should start streaming steadily out of the box’s vent hole.
STEP 4 After 5 minutes, pull the tin off of the coals. The resulting cloth should be solid black and have a silky texture but not fall apart. Now you have tinder that you can carry with you until you need it for firestarting in almost any situation.
STEP 5 When you need tinder, pull the char cloth out and strike a single spark onto it. It should burn slowly and steadily.
STEP 6 Use the cloth to ignite your larger bundle of tinder.
104 Learn the Tricks to Tinder
You can become a fire-building genius with a little know-how and some practice. Tinder is essential, and it’s worthwhile to know what to burn.
Use only dead stuff, nothing green, and have extra on standby. The center of your fire lay should be loaded with tinder, and it’s this you light—not the wood. Make sure to block the wind with your body when lighting.
Pine, firs, spruce, and most other needle-bearing trees have sap in their wood. This is pitch, which is usually very flammable. Select dead twigs from these trees to get your fire going quickly even in damp weather. And pine needles make a good addition to tinder at any time, because they light easily even when wet. Another tip? Douse your tinder with bug spray before lighting—it will add some serious flammability. Stand back.
105 Don’t Get Caught Without: SARDINES
Maybe you’re sitting on a bunker full of these stinky little canned fish, or maybe you just have a can or two in the pantry. Believe it or not, sardines can be used for a variety of survival applications.
GREASE LAMP
To make a grease lamp from a tin of sardines, you should start with some sardines packed in oil. Eat the fish and place a string in the oil with just 1 inch (2.5 cm) sticking out for a wick.
ANIMAL TRAP
Cut an X in the tin, secure the tin to a stake with a length of wire, and place it over a hole. If something slender-footed yet heavy (like a large fox) steps on the X, it’ll punch through and get stuck (for a little while).
SIGNAL MIRROR
A shiny can will pass for a signal mirror in a pinch, especially if you have a way
Know that building your fire is going to take much longer than it would in dry conditions. Once you have a decent fire going, stack wet wood around and over it in a sort of log cabin. This will protect the fire from rain and dry the wood for later.
102 Get the Best Materials You Can Find
Whether your ignition source is a match, a lighter, a road flare, or a friction fire, you’ll need the same type of materials to get the fire started and keep it burning. The first material is tinder. These slight materials have a lot of surface area and little mass, so they release their flammable gases more quickly than stouter materials. Tinder should always be fine, fluffy, dead, and dry, and it should come from the plant kingdom. Hair, fur, and feathers do not make good tinder. Instead, try dead pine needles, crunchy leaves, crumbly dead grasses, and the fibrous inner bark from dead tree branches. Next you’ll need an assortment of very slender dead twigs, wood shavings, and/or split wood splinters for kindling. These work best formed into a cone shape around a core of tinder. Add a few finger-thick sticks on the exterior of the cone and it’s ready to light near the bottom. Insert a lit match, or light several spots with a lighter—and watch your hard work pay off with flames.
103 Make Char Cloth
Char cloth uses a process called pyrolysis (burning without oxygen) to turn ordinary cloth into a fire starter that’s great to use with flint and steel, since it only takes a single spark to ignite. Here’s how.
STEP 1 Make a small hole in the top of a tin that closes tightly.
STEP 2 Fill the tin with scraps of cotton cloth (it needs to be all-natural; no synthetic fibers).
STEP 3 Place your container in the coals of a fire. Smoke should start streaming steadily out of the box’s vent hole.
STEP 4 After 5 minutes, pull the tin off of the coals. The resulting cloth should be solid black and have a silky texture but not fall apart. Now you have tinder that you can carry with you until you need it for firestarting in almost any situation.
STEP 5 When you need tinder, pull the char cloth out and strike a single spark onto it. It should burn slowly and steadily.
STEP 6 Use the cloth to ignite your larger bundle of tinder.
104 Learn the Tricks to Tinder
You can become a fire-building genius with a little know-how and some practice. Tinder is essential, and it’s worthwhile to know what to burn.
Use only dead stuff, nothing green, and have extra on standby. The center of your fire lay should be loaded with tinder, and it’s this you light—not the wood. Make sure to block the wind with your body when lighting.
Pine, firs, spruce, and most other needle-bearing trees have sap in their wood. This is pitch, which is usually very flammable. Select dead twigs from these trees to get your fire going quickly even in damp weather. And pine needles make a good addition to tinder at any time, because they light easily even when wet. Another tip? Douse your tinder with bug spray before lighting—it will add some serious flammability. Stand back.
105 Don’t Get Caught Without: SARDINES
Maybe you’re sitting on a bunker full of these stinky little canned fish, or maybe you just have a can or two in the pantry. Believe it or not, sardines can be used for a variety of survival applications.
GREASE LAMP
To make a grease lamp from a tin of sardines, you should start with some sardines packed in oil. Eat the fish and place a string in the oil with just 1 inch (2.5 cm) sticking out for a wick.
ANIMAL TRAP
Cut an X in the tin, secure the tin to a stake with a length of wire, and place it over a hole. If something slender-footed yet heavy (like a large fox) steps on the X, it’ll punch through and get stuck (for a little while).
SIGNAL MIRROR
A shiny can will pass for a signal mirror in a pinch, especially if you have a way
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