Tis a Morning for Fire

Tis a morning for fire, PBN family. 55 degrees and all I can think about are flames. You know what I mean? The hearth. The heat of the hearth or the fire pit outside. I don't know. I overdid it at the gym a little last night. I don't know. I don't know what I got going on. Something weird. Something's a little off. The cold is colder than it should be. On the body, if you know what I mean. But it's got me thinking about fire. It's got me thinking about... fire over the years, you know, when I, I always used to love setting things on fire. As a little kid, I used to go get the free rental or the free, uh, real estate magazines they'd have near the Amtrak station where I grew up and go hide under the bridge and set them on fire, steal a lighter from my parents who were both smokers. It was a good time. Yeah. pyromania at uh i don't know nine ten something along those lines it was fun it was a good time sometimes you bring a bring a friend phone a friend set some stuff on fire we had a ball never really caused any real blazes that made any real problem so that was good uh then i took you know i got into cooking and all that kind of stuff and you know you're around fire again once again One of the easiest transitions for me into sort of the preparedness and wilderness survival world was just not being afraid of fire. You know, I didn't realize or I had been burnt and been so unafraid of flame for so long that I kind of forgot that people were afraid of fire, you know, and not just fire in its entirety. Not fire in its grandest form, but like a spark and then a flame. Like, ooh, the little flame could touch me and hurt me. Right? I hadn't realized that, you know, years of pyromania, you get accustomed to like, you know, we do stupid stuff like put matches out on our tongue or put our fingers through the flame of the lighter just to get our friends to go like, whoa! You know, that kind of thing. And then, like I said, I've been burnt so many different ways. Ha ha ha! in the hands and arms from my time in the kitchens that it's just you know you know what real pain is what real burns are and what you know what kind of heat and flame can affect you if situations are right but when I decided to get into fire and it's figuring like the first motivation of course like most early survivalist preppers is you want to be able to start a fire with less Right? You want to be able to start a fire with less. And one of the first things I sought to conquer was the old rectangle magnesium ferrocerium combo. Right? And I was such a nut that I used to carry a ferrocerium magnesium brick on my keychain. And people would always give me grief about it. Like, what do you carry that for? You know what I mean? Yeah. I guess to the uninitiated, it looked kind of stupid. Or maybe it was kind of stupid, actually. I don't know. What it did for me, though, was allow me to play with it all the time. And I figured a lot of things out about how to hold the little striker. There is an optimal way to hold the striker on a ferrocerium rod. Do you guys know that? I don't know if you know that. I don't know if that's common knowledge, right? If you grip the ferrocerium rod up to the tip and scrape using the power of your forearm and wrist and grip, it'll work. But there's a technique with your scraper, and it's to bend it a bit. It's to hold it almost kind of lightly in your digits, your four digits, and then to press with your thumb on the back of the flat part of the striker to create Maximum tension at the tip and then you use the tip to strike the ferrocerium rod. And for me, I mean, I've done it so many times, I just know the difference, right? It's like this is the way to do it. You watch people do it. You watch people do it with a knife. You watch people do it with an included scraper or whatever. I can just tell. I feel the slight bend in the metal. I use the very tip where sort of like I guess the tension is at its greatest. And the showers of sparks are always way different and way better. Another technique I learned over the years was, you know, sometimes you have these fires in these situations where you shower a certain type of tinder. Maximally dry and all that kind of stuff. Best case scenario, right? Best case scenario, tinder or fire starter. You shower with a little bit of spark and it's up and you're on. Whenever conditions are different than that, lightly damp, tinder that has... One good example is the Bigfoot fur that we use, right? We use the dried wax, the wax doused dryer lint, okay? Okay. That to me is the best fire starter, uh, on the planet. And it is, uh, completely free for us. For those of you who burn candles and wax and those kinds of things and have, you know, a dryer, it's, I'll never buy anything. I'll never spend a penny on any kind of, you know, unless it comes in a fire starter kit that I want, like the Lima Tango fire starter kit, which I think is a great deal. Um, But when you're having trouble, maybe it's cold, maybe, you know, whatever. Things, fire is not always, particularly when you're using ferro rods, it's not always like a sure thing with one strike. I find that a barrage, a quick barrage of sparks gets me there when I'm having trouble. So in other words, you can take your time with really dry tinder and do nice long sort of strokes on the ferrocerium rod. Sure. And it does something if you got a lot of good dry tinder maybe an accelerant in there something like that then boom you'll get a fire if I'm having trouble then I'll stick the ferrocerium rod into the tinder all the way into it or I'll lay it on top of the bundle whatever it is I'm using and then in rapid succession I'll do short hard scrapes on the ferrocerium rod lots like that you know what I mean Over and over again. Almost chaotic. And then there'll be flame. It's sort of like an overwhelm. It's like overwhelming force on the tinder. And from there, those are the two techniques I learned and felt really good about and taught my oldest and my wife and how to do that thing. My youngest, I haven't really sat down and had him play with ferro rods a lot yet. Probably this season. But those are the two techniques that I learned. I spent about a year. No lighters, no matches. Fire pits, camping, fireplace. I spent about a year straight using a variety of ferro rods to get my reps in. And to feel like I can pick up a ferro rod and I can start a fire with it. And I felt good about that. I never spent a lot of time on, uh, uh, what is it? Friction fires and that kind of thing. Um, did a little bit of flint and steel stuff, but I always felt like with the flint and steel, um, the tinder just had to be so good. You know what I mean? It had to be just so good that I didn't like relying on it. I didn't like it being a piece of the puzzle. I feel like with, with the ferro rod, it's one of those things that like, Oh, the other thing I never, never liked about the, um, flint and steel was that there's no flint around they say you could use glass and stuff like that but i always felt like there's really no flint around so i don't know it's too many moving parts that didn't make it easy enough for me gradually i moved back to uh matches and lighters once i felt proficient in the ferro rod and then i learned also from all of that um You know, the study of tinder is important too, right? Being able to look at different plants and barks and that kind of stuff and conditions of plants and barks and say to yourself, well, that's worth pulling off. That's worth pulling a strip off of that. That's worth gathering up those grasses. That could be viable. You know, doing all that, that just helps, you know? That really just, to me, that made all the difference in being able to start fires. I did a lot of starting fires in the woods and in the backyard with a lot of smothering of fires. I did a lot of starting fires. I did a lot of fire building with... wet wood or wood that was wet inside, deep inside that spent a lot of time steaming and sputtering and hissing and that kind of thing. And, um, I'm glad, you know what I mean? I'm going to, these things are important because everything's not optimal. But what I would say in terms of fire building is like, you know, where you really want to spend some time is that space where you get your flame, your initial flame from tinder. And then you add your kindling, right? Your pencil-sized sticks. You add your kindling to the flame. And that kindling then needs some time. And I'm the type of guy who just give me all the kindling. Give me all the kindling. Give me a log cabin fire lay. To me, there's nothing easier or better. And give me as much kindling as possible. As much dry, dead, whatever kind of kindling that I can get my hands on. Because then I'm going to take my time. And this is where I always used to mess up. And you may mess up here too. A lot of people do. I'm going to take my time with that kindling event. And really turn that kindling into a bed of coals. And just spend time there. You know what I mean? And just take the time. It's one of those things. You can have a lot of fun. Like with kids. Just throwing little tiny sticks into the fire. Watching the fire grow. And then add some more sticks. Maybe some dry leaves if you want. And just this step. The kindling step. I just feel like... You get the fire started. You're excited. Okay, I used the ferro rod. I got a flame. I put some dry kindling on it. The flames grew up, right? They grew up real fast over the kindling. And now I'm going to add a big old log and everything dies. Or now I'm going to add a bunch and a bunch and a bunch of kindling and then everything dies. Or it slows to the point where it's damn near dead and you're like, what did I do? take your time with the kindling man an initial stack that's why I like the that's why I love the log cabin fire lay so much because it gives you the ability to take your initial fire and your initial fire lay of like you know I mean your fire lay is the log cabin uh sort of Lincoln log style fuel it gives you time and it gives you airflow and that really is the key from my experience, right? So now you have, you've built this little base of a house, essentially, out of your logs or out of your fuel. And then you build the fire inside that, inside the house, right? So you've got your tinder down in there. You've got your, well, a lot of times what I do is I'll build a smaller fire lay with kindling. Then I'll stack kindling on top of the few layers of logs that create the log cabin itself. Then outside of the log cabin fire lay. I light my tinder. And slide it into the house. Underneath the stacked logs. And let that kindling get started. And the thing that I love about it. One of the things. It's the best. But one of the things I love most about it. Is that your fuel. Your main fuel. Is always heating up. And always near or touching fire. So from the onset of starting the fire. Your log cabin fire lay is getting hit with flames, getting licked with flames, heat, the whole nine yards. And to me, that just makes the whole process easier. I slowly feed kiddling into the center of that fire lay over time. And before long, your fuel is lit. You're not stacking anything. You're not leaning wood against wood to build a campfire that way. It's the most sturdy. It's the most effective. To me, it's the only thing that I do. If I am teaching someone, that's how I'm teaching them. You know what I mean? This is the fire lay you want to use. It's pretty hands-off, the whole thing. But the biggest thing that's going to kill your fire, no matter where you're lighting your fire, is your desire to just keep adding fuel too fast. And before you know it, you're looking at these tiny little embers and white smokes coming off, and you're going, what did I do? my experience that's what you've done you've done added too much too fast um so i thought i'd give you a little diatribe on fire i do want to create some uh i do want to create some sort of preparedness evergreen content about 10 years prepping and all the categories you know what i mean what i've learned over a decade of doing this stuff on each thing, right? Water, shelter, fire, comms, all that kind of stuff because it's, I've made so many errors, so many mistakes. I've had so many successes that it's just, it's good information there. You know what I mean? But for now, enjoy your Friday. Look for Could You Survive on Saturday, right? Or Can You Survive? I'm sorry. Can You Survive? Our new show, I thought it was going to be out Friday. It might be out late Friday night. It'll probably be out Saturday, to be honest with you. And I might turn it into a Saturday show anyhow. Because we really don't have sort of a Saturday show. I talked to Jordan. She said she's coming back with Phoenix Survival. But it would be cool to have another big show on Saturdays. So, folks, thank you so much. I'm going to run the Radio Check ad for you. So those of you who are interested in joining the Radio Check group can do so. In the ad, it says you're going to click a button for PBN. You're actually going to plug in PBN on the shopping page. You'll see a section for an affiliate code. And just plug that in right there. Okay, they changed it on us, so I'll have to change the ad. But no biggie. No biggie. We just keep doing our thing. Get your hands on one of these Go Plus radios, $ 1. 99. And then you can join us every Sunday. But I'll let Radio James do the talking on that. 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