Building a fire can mean the difference between a freezing overnight stay in the woods and a warm and toasty night around a campfire. Knowing how to build a fire is a handy skill to have, whether you apply some of the following techniques to the fire in your fireplace, an outdoor grill, or a campsite. Impromptu or planned, wet or dry, knowing how to build a fire, in some cases, will save your life.

How Fire Works

When building a fire, it helps to have a basic understanding of the science behind the event. In the simplest terms, when you add heat to fuel, a gas is produced. When this gas hits the oxygen in the air, it burns. Fire is created.

There are three elements necessary to make and maintain a fire: air, heat, and fuel. Without any one of these, the fire will not burn. There is a certain ratio of each of these ingredients, but the only way to learn it is to build fires.

Fire Building Materials

The following three materials are needed to build a fire:

• Tinder
  • Dry material which needs only a spark to start a fire.
  • Must be completely dry to respond to heat.
  • Includes some types of tree bark, wood shavings, dead plant matter, straw, sawdust, dead pine needles, rotten tree trunks, pine knots, down feathers, down seed heads, lint, cotton, gunpowder, wax paper, charred cloth, dried vegetable fibers, paper, and bamboo shavings.
• Kindling
  • Readily combustible material.
  • Added to burning tinder to increase fire’s temperature so that it will light less combustible materials.
  • Must be totally dry to ensure rapid burning.
  • Many parks and wilderness areas don’t allow patrons to gather fallen material because of its important role in the ecosystem.
  • Includes twigs, small pieces of wood, split wood, thick cardboard, and oil or gas soaked wood.
• Fuel
  • Less combustible material that burns slow and steady once lit.
  • Includes dry wood and branches, dried insides of tree trunks, finely split green wood, twisted dried grass, dry peat, dried animal poo, animal fat, coal, and oil.