-Easiest Way to Make a Camp Fire_ The Elevator Fire Lay

So every good fire starts with a really good fire lay. You have to get all the elements of the fire triangle right in order to get combustion. If not you'll have a smoky fire or you won't get combustion at all. So the fire triangle is three sides of the triangle. Obviously you have heat, you have fuel, and you have air. Air is provided for free so long as you don't snuff that out with your fire lay. The heat is going to be from your ignition source that's going to then go to your transfer to your tinder bundle, which in this case I'm going to use a ferrocerium rod, a ferro rod, some inner bark from aspen, and some fatwood which is plentiful down here in the southeast. And it's so plentiful that you could use it with every fire. So that's what I'm going to use for my heat. And then for fuel I've got a variety of different sizes of sticks. Going from the tinder being the smallest portion of that fuel to your kindling, a good rule of thumb for your kindling is to think of matchsticks, pencils, and markers. That size, a good mixture of all three of them is what you need. You don't need to separate them out into piles. Each one of these little piles are a blend of those three sizes. And then from there you go to sustaining fuel. And sustaining fuel is what you use to actually sustain the fire with for longer periods. So the tinder accepts the heat from the ignition source, that tinder bundle then transfers the heat to your three different sizes of kindling, and then your kindling transfers heat to your sustainable fuel which is thumb size up to wrist size, even larger than that depending on what type of firewood you put away for the night. So keeping those principles in mind we're going to construct what I call the elevator fire lay. And I think this is a very, this is a superior fire lay in my opinion because it gives you the ability to introduce air very easily. So I placed a larger log to the back, that becomes the pivot point. Then I'll take a smaller stick, which is basically your lip stick, and put that towards the back. And then I'll just take a couple of my larger sticks, marker size, and I'll cross them basically at the center of my pivot log. And I have the ability to lift the entire thing up with the lip stick. From there I'll just take a mix of pencils, matchsticks, or matchsticks, pencils, and marker size, and place them on. And I put them on standby. And I want to leave an area here to place my tender bundle. Same thing for the other side. I'm just laying that fuel on the framework that I've created. And you should be able to lift the entire thing up. Then I'll take some smaller stuff and put it right at the apex of the triangle that I created. So this becomes my fire lay. Then from there I'm going to prepare my tender. I already have a tender bundle and this inner bark is dry enough that it would probably take a spark with a ferrocerium rod right off the bat. So I may not need to use fatwood, but because it's so plentiful here in the southeast, I'm going to. And I have some. So I'm going to place this catch here so I can kind of gather this as we go. All right, so when I'm processing fatwood, I just like to take a small piece like this. And you don't need a lot. There's no reason to burn this entire stick of fatwood. I just need some shavings off of this that really fine shaving with a lot of surface area that's going to catch the spark. And I'm going to place that inside the tender bundle. So I just kind of find an edge. And this is another reason to have a 90 degree spine on your knife is you can save the sharp edge for things that you actually need that for rather than dull it processing tender. So I'll use the spine of my knife and the point of leverage is right up here against the handle, not out here. If you go out here, you tend to have a lot more flex in your wrist. Here's a lot more solid and you can get a lot more consistent shavings off of here. So I'm just going to shave me about a pile of fatwood that's probably about a 50 cent piece size for reference, maybe a golf ball size. It doesn't take a whole lot. If you hang up on a spot, take the edge and just kind of shave that off and get a smooth plane to work with again, get a little more in there. And that's probably plenty right there. So I've created somewhat of a nest with this, it doesn't necessarily need to be a bird's nest. But something to that effect, you have a little pocket to place that fatwood in, put that in a nice little pile. And then for your ferrocerium rod technique, I like to use a large ferrocerium rod that I can handle with my hand. And I'll use the spine of my knife. And my goal is to shower sparks down onto the fatwood and into the bundle and get that lit. So what I'll do is I'll place my foot right next to the bundle. And with the knife, I'll plant my fist right next to that, this becomes stationary, and I'm actually going to pull the rod up here at this point of leverage and shower sparks down onto that. So it's kind of like you're starting a lawnmower, if you think of it that way. What I don't want to do is push into the tinder bundle and smash it and take air out of the system. So if it takes you more than three strikes with your ferro rod, then something's either wrong with your technique or your tinder. And rather than consistently waste the resource, stop what you're doing and reassess both of those. Is it your technique or does your tinder need to be processed further? So I find that point of friction, you got plenty of time, put your knife away for safety, make sure you know where your ferro rod is. And then fire likes to climb. So I'm going to allow it to climb through that tinder bundle and place it in the center of that fire light. Take my sticks from the top, lightly sprinkle those on, take these sticks from the center. And then because I have a lot of smoke, I know that I need some air. So I can lift that elevator up, see how the smoke's gone away now, and give that time to catch. Once you have fuel that is thumb size or larger burning, you can actually walk away from that fire. It's considered sustainable at that point and you can gather more fuel if you need to. And then because fire's coming up through the center, I've got a lot of stuff out here that's not doing anything. Just take from the outside and bring it up on top so that the heat can travel up through there. So that is the elevator fire lay. If I put this on too tightly and it starts to snuff out and smoke, then you can always introduce more air by using your lipstick. So the elevator fire lay is a great way to get a fire established quickly.