Fire Starting in the Rain and in Wet Weather

Guys, today we're going to take a look at building a fire in wet, rainy conditions. And this could also apply to snow. There could be a few differences there, but pretty much the same principle. One of the things about the rule of threes is you live three hours in harsh conditions before you pass away. And we're talking about extreme conditions, but when it's raining and it's just a little cool, because it tends to cool things off, you know, your body temperature could drop. And so that is one thing about having a fire that is vital. It gives you the warmth you need. It can boil some water. It can cook your food. I mean, there's a lot of things. People are found every year in our national forest that have just died of exposure, just died from too much cold or too much heat. And of course, fire would definitely not help with the heat. But there's one thing about, you know, just getting out of your car and going on a little walk and getting turned around. The next thing you know, night's coming and you need to build a fire and it's raining. Now, when you're building a fire, typically it takes practice. You need to know how to build a fire in good conditions, knowing how to put that together, knowing what you need to do. But when it comes to rainy weather, even seasoned outdoorsmen can have issues. Now, one of the most important things you really need is a good knife. Having something a little larger if possible. But you know, if you're going to be out somewhere in the wilderness, it's just good to have a knife. Here we have one of the Strong Arms by Gerber. We're just going to use it. This is actually probably a little smaller than I would like to as far as ideally, but this is something that can get us through. And then obviously having something to light the fire. Now, my all-time favorite is just a standard Bic lighter. Hit the wheel and you've got fire. But one thing I've noticed over the years is sometimes this little lever release gets pushed down, it releases all the fuel, and you have nothing. Except you do have a spark that you can use, but then you really need some good tinder. So I would also recommend whenever you can, whenever you're out and about, any potential of getting lost and needing to build a fire, have some sort of fire kit. Now, you can put this in about anything. I mean, you could slip some of this just in your pocket, but having a small container like this keeps it all together. Of course, the Bic lighter. I do have one of the torch type lighters and these really produce a good flame and puts that flame right out there. It makes it really hot, but also having a fire steel. Now, I like redundancy when it comes to any kind of survival item because sometimes one might work better than the other. One thing I will say about the fire steel, if you have one, you're really going to need some kind of tinder, some kind of artificial tinder. It's more difficult, and you can do it, but it's more difficult to start a fire without some kind of accelerant. Here we have just some tinder tabs and I have some impregnated wood as well with wax. We also have some, just some waterproof matches, but matches can run out, especially in wet conditions while building a fire. And my all-time favorite, Vaseline and cotton balls. And this is really easy, cheap. Seems like we always have cotton balls and Vaseline for different things. So just having a minimal, it doesn't have to be this size, having some kind of little fire kit would be great, but at least have a lighter or matches in your pocket. This is a little hazard four pouch. I just adopted it. It had something else in here. But guys, today I'm going to show you how to build a fire with just some fire, whether it's a lighter or a match and a knife. And of course wood from mother nature. Now we're in the woods, so it's not going to be too difficult to find wood. What I look for is dead wood, really standing dead wood, because it's going to be easier to find the dry wood that's inside. And that's the main thing we're going to look at. But you can use sticks that are all along the ground. It just takes a little longer for it to dry. But for your tinder, especially, you need to have some really dry wood. And if you can find some fat wood in the middle of a evergreen, that works even better. Now, when you're looking to get the fire started, some very small little twigs, nothing that's larger than a pencil. And then you want to find some pencil sized pieces for building that fire up and then a little bit larger, maybe towards your thumb. And so that way you can have a collection of wood. But go ahead and get those smaller pieces first before you start adding on larger pieces. But even then, you're not going to add a lot of large wood and you're going to need quite a bit. Right here we have a cedar tree. It's dead and it's not standing, but it is leaning. And so the first thing I'm going to do, because it has all these twigs, go ahead and check these and pull some of these off. And what you want is to hear a snap. When you hear the snap, that's what you're wanting because it's dead and it's dry. If it's difficult to break, that means it's still alive and it's more difficult to start. And guys, what you want to hear is a definite snap, just like that. Now here we have a dead tree that's really short and small and it's right against the live tree. I want to test it. Yeah, hear that? And you're going to have dry wood inside there. So that is what we're looking for. You can go along and pick up sticks on the ground. It's just going to take longer. But I don't even need my knife for this. One great source is cedar and the sticks at the bottom just die. You still have life at the top, but they just seem to die off. So you can use that and plus you could possibly have fatwood or at least a little bit of resin. One thing you don't want are sticks that are dead, that have been old and mushy. They're starting to rot. Those usually get soaked. Birch wood bark is probably some of the best fire starter out there, but it's according to where you live. We don't have a lot of birch wood around here, but if we did, I would definitely use it. And guys, when it comes to these small trees like this, it's better to go ahead and bend it and break it than to continue to chop. It'll drain all of your energy. We're going to make our tender out of this. I'm just going to show you. I split this one. I just broke it. All that wood inside is dry. It smells like cedar. I mean, that is going to be excellent for getting that tender. Now, next step is batoning. So we're going to take our knife and this is really where you need your knife the most. You want to get this into quarters. Now we want to get that edge and we're going to feather that dry edge. And this is the easiest, the path of least resistance. So it's going to be easier to get the feathering from that. Plus again, it is dry and it sure does smell great. Guys, I was sitting here making these shavings and feathering and I realized my camera wasn't recording. So you take the inside and you pull the wood to you because you don't want to cut into your jacket. I have my rain jacket laying here because I want to keep this tender as dry as possible. Any tender that falls off your jacket, you want to go ahead because all this is going to be used. Now guys, if you can find a log that's solid like this one and then you can take your piece of wood and you can draw it. This is a lot easier than feathering. Now I don't have my jacket right here, but I just wanted to show you this. Sometimes when it gets knots in it, it's going to bind up a little bit. You're just using the leverage of that wood to help you with the labor. And if you get that corner, that is really where you're able to draw that through or to feather it. And once you get rid of the useness of that wood, you can use it for your fire and this is all dry inside. Now I've got some smaller size limbs, about an inch in diameter. This is going to be our bed and then you want two solid logs that actually set up on these just a little bit. This is going to give us a little troughed area, but a platform to put our shavings. We're going to go ahead and put some shavings in here. We're not going to put all of them. We're just going to put a nice little amount. Now I want to get those lit. Now one thing I will say, of course, matches work. Some people use a candle and they put it up under it. I think that's a great idea. I just saw that recently. The candle just keeps burning. As you can see, this cedar is lighting right away. And guys, I'm telling you, I just got it out of the woods, but it was standing, so it's not saturated. You want to get those smaller pieces first. You want to make sure there's plenty of airflow with those shavings. I'm going to blow on the fire just a little bit. Give it some oxygen. Spread out our shavings just a little bit. Notice when I give it the oxygen, it starts to flame up. Once we get these shavings to really start burning, we're going to want to put our smaller sticks up. We're going to get them here beside it. Start letting them kind of dry out a little bit. This is why you get a lot of shavings. We're just going to blow on it, and we're building a bed of embers under there. Okay, here we go. We're starting to get a little bit of fire. We're starting to get these sticks a little closer to be able to dry out. Just remember that these smaller sticks will dry out quicker. That's why we start with them. Thinly lay the sticks. You want to make sure that the fire is getting oxygen. You don't want to smother it out. You'll see some smoke coming off, and that is getting rid of the moisture on the sticks. Now the sticks are starting to burn. That's a great sign. I'm going to start laying some larger sticks going the other direction, making sure we have oxygen because, guys, these fires can smother out, but we need to get these sticks dry. All right, we got these embers going now. We got a nice bed of coal underneath. Trying to keep the bed underneath. We've got the tenders already burnt up. Make sure we don't lose our fire underneath. You can see the sticks starting to light right here. Now we're on our way. A little more sticks on here. You want that to continue to dry. Guys, you want to constantly tend to your fire because if they can start having some issues, you might be able to get it back up quickly. If you let it go too much, you can't. Give it a little oxygen every once in a while. Yeah, we're doing good, and when I say it's been raining, guys, I mean it is wet. That's one thing you want to make sure you keep it on some kind of dry ground, but putting the logs in there under it's going to help big time. Well, guys, that's the way you get a fire started in wet conditions. When we started, it was actually raining, and it kind of calmed down, but this works either way. If you do find some kind of low hanging area, maybe you get under a log or some kind of natural shelter area, it makes it a little bit easier, and a lot of times you can find dry wood that's under there. Of course, splitting the wood really and batoning the wood gives you that dry wood inside, so that really cuts your time down, but as you can see, I mean, it's going good. This is just a start. I mean, you're going to want to add your larger pieces. We've got some logs here to add as well, but the main thing is once you get this, you're pretty much there just adding in the nice logs. Now, you're going to need to go ahead again and dry those as well, get those near the fire, but guys, I'm telling you, if you're out there, fire is one of the most important survival elements that we have. It gives you heat, gives you light, cooks your food, boils your water, it can keep predators at bay, and it's just good morale. Guys, if you're serious about prepping and survival, check out Survival Dispatch Insider. It is one of the most credible sources for survival and prepping on the web. There's a lot of world-renowned contributors there that give us a lot of information. We upload one exclusive video to the Insider every week. I'll have a link down below in the description. It's well worth checking out. Be strong. Be of good courage. God bless America. Long live the Republic. And, I mean, you just hit the... but guys, but guys, we're going to try to, but guys, instead, I want to kind of get all, I don't really need to get the bark off. There's a lot of world-renowned content. There's a lot of world-renowned competitors.