@nathan shepherd -- The top down 'seems' to burn slower. That is an unscientific opinion. Secondly, my firewood was more wet than my neighbors. But it seems intuitive when you think in terms of fire likes to climb. The top down will not ignite the wood below with the same expediency as the traditional fire with copious amounts of wood just laying overhead.
That's what I guessed. I've never got round to trying the top down fire but I would like to see one in action. The wood we burn when camping here in Scotland is often wet so I wonder if it's the best option. I will have to try it!
NO - for wet wood. You need the drying effect of the heat coming up from the bottom (your presumably dry kindling) drying out what is stacked on top.
Halloween fire from the wild sedentary comfort of my front driveway. There aren't any little "trick or treaters" running around in the woods. My kindling is bigger than your kindling because I have a piece of paper in there. It was a very pleasant evening visiting with the neighbors. They always like my fires. I didn't even use a match. In case you were wondering, yes, the CRK was offered up to the gods of firemaking.
Bravo is one of the few people I know of who can pass my "Do you speak southern?" test w/o trying. Two guys leaning on a fence in the barn yard in Alabama. Clem: "MR Pigs." Joe Bob: "MR Not Pigs." Clem: "OSAR, seem tails?" Joe Bob: "LIB, MR Pigs."
Ok, I feel totally outclassed here by the flint/steel guys and friction fire people. <hat off, bows deeply> I'll just stay with my tried and true ferro rod. For the first time today in a LONG time -- first time since getting back to Maine last March after being gone for nearly nine months -- I practiced my fire craft skills. I spent a few hours this afternoon down in the meadows and woods out back of my temporary (month) quarters. My host has about 80 acres, with connections to a lot more. (west of I-95, west of Bangor about an hour). Some of it is logged, most is not (at least not in decades). I went down there today in the first day-time snow, sleet, freezing rain event we've had this year -- just a dusting, but a good damp day to practice fire building skills, check out my fire kit (needs work), and learn some new materials. I was just testing my small fire kit (emergency backup) today -- a little Altoids can with one of (my small) ferro rods (LMF), striker, some fatwood (from Bravo from a few years back), and some overdone PJCB's (petroleum jelly cotton balls). Overdone because I used too much PJ on this batch -- they're just chunks of jelly, and in the cold of the day (low 30'sF), very stiff. Here's some pics. This is in the woods about 300 yds from my room at the house, across two meadows and a marsh with a nice creek running through it with a beaver dam on it. Orange? We're in the last three days of deer season here, and there are a lot of hunters in this area. (I was also wearing an orange hat and a bright red rain jacket.) That's my beloved Eberlestock Halftrack with a light load today -- not much insulation nor pads -- but all the essential tools. Above is my Altoids can, Embelit Ti, and my two favorite woods knives: Mora Companion and Helle Fossekallen. I can get better feather sticks and shavings with it than the Mora, so it gets used mostly these days. My GB wildlife hatchet is on the right, but I didn't need it today for a small stove fire. I snapped a bunch of limbs off nearby fir trees -- the lower dead ones stay dry even in wet weather -- just enough for a short fire in the stove. This was just to practice lighting skills. I got the stove set and loaded, ready to strike, when my cam batteries died after the next shot. I've learned the best way to start a fire in the Emberlit is to shave a bunch of small stuff into the bottom, then load the top with lots of tinder and smaller kindling. Then, spark the fire on the outside of the fire door on the front, and then lift the lit tinder into the chamber with a couple of sticks, already placed part way in. Usually goes right up. But today, I was not successful on the first and second try. Here's why. My PJCB's were too jellied, and stiff from the cold. I failed to leave enough fibers on the cotton balls. So, I used my knife tip to tease the ball apart to try to get some small bunches of threads exposed. I shaved some fatwood on top of that, but no love. It just wouldn't catch a spark. So, I walked over to a downed birch with peely bark, and stripped off a big handful. I roughed up the inside of the bark with my knife tip, then laid it on the sticks leading into the fire box along with some PJ soaked fibers. This time, in about two sparks with the rod, it went up. Fortunately, the cam batts allowed one final shot before lights out in the fading daylight (at 4 pm no less). Right in front is the last piece of birch bark about to go in. I came back to the house and scored some plain cotton balls from my host, now part of my small kit. (My larger fire kit, still in storage north of here, has an assortment of regular cotton balls, PJCB, fire discs and more fat wood, and a larger ferro rod.) Also, on the way back, I found some cattails. I've never tried them as tinder, but will asap. Not sure I'll have time to try again before I leave here for parts north. But the biggest lesson of the day for me: use lots of birch bark. The stuff goes up like gas-soaked paper, and it's quite abundant here. Oh, and I've also linked my ferro rod and its striker together with a short piece of orange paracord; too easy to lose one or the other otherwise.
I've been reading/researching cattails as tinder. So far, I'm impressed. It's clearly one of the best natural tinders out there. One pod can produce numerous fires when combined with birch bark and a tinder bundle. Here's a good video of the process; skip to about 3:40 for the main idea.
