Fire Making Tools
There are a few ways to start a fire while camping. It just depends on how rugged you want to be or how much of a glamper you are. In most situations I lean to the glamping side, but fire building is one of the more fun things that I like to try and do on my own.
For all fires you need a way to start the fire, tinder, kindling, and wood. As far as a way to start the fire look at the article on matches and lighters in the camping section of the gear checklist.
Lets start with the easy route. The tinder is the highly flammable part of the fire that burns quickly, but is there to set the kindling on fire. The easiest option for tinder is a fire starter. They sell fire starter logs that will burn for hours. You could technically use them as the fire, but it won’t be big and beautiful, just small and smoldering. You can also make your own fire starters from household items (keep a watch on our blog and youtube channel for how to make these).
Some people will just bring lighter fluid and spray it straight on the kindling and wood. I am not a fan of this, partially because I don’t trust a bottle of lighter fluid anywhere near an open fire, partially because lighter fluid burns off very quickly unless you use a ton of it.
If you want to guarantee that you will have fire, fire starters are the best bet. But, if you want to feel more like an outdoorsman you should forgo the fire starter. In this situation for tinder you can gather local debris. Dry grass, pine needles, leaves. We typically bring some things from home incase the campsite is wet. If it is wet finding dry tinder is nearly impossible. But, you can bring newspaper, dryer lint, any paper product, tortilla chips if you have some old stale ones. Don’t be shy about bringing a decent amount of these incase you have issues getting things to take. And truthfully it doesn’t hurt to bring one or two homemade fire starters as a backup.
From here you need kindling and wood. Now you could buy firewood at home, but it is highly ill-advised. Bringing firewood from a different location can introduce harmful elements to the environment. You can bring tree killing insects, invasive plant species, or even diseases that can kill off plants in a new area. So, you want to either collect your own kindling and wood or purchase it near where you are staying.
For kindling you want twigs, bark, small branches… These are meant to light fairly quickly while sitting in the fire of the tinder. Then you want large pieces of wood that will be the fuel of the fire. These you can often find sold at large campgrounds, grocery stores, or gas stations nearby. If you can’t find any for sale you will need to collect wood, check the rules if you are at a campground or park. You will need to gather fallen branches or broken off chunks of wood. You want dry, dead wood that is not still attached to a tree. Breaking branches off a tree will not only harm the environment, but also be very hard to burn.
It helps to take a few whacks at your wood to splinter it up and help it catch fire. Also if you can’t find any kindling you can take wood and chop it up into small splintery pieces or chop branches into smaller pieces to act as tinder.
Then there you have it, you should have everything you need.