Making fire.

One of the guiding principles of bushcraft and survival is the rule of three. The rule explains that in general (there will always be exceptions) you can survive three minutes without air, three hours without shelter (in a harsh environment), three days without water and three weeks without food. This is really useful when it comes to prioritising your tasks when not in a survival situation. Given that you're probably breathing, setting up a shelter of some kind will be a top priority, this might be a tent, tarp or natural shelter early on.

Bulrush and Bracken

On my canoe trip to Sweden, one of the first things we focused on each day was collecting firewood. This makes a lot of sense when you consider we all had our shelters with us and while finding firewood you can scout out potential spots for your setup. Given that the three hours without shelter is greatly reduced if you're wet (and that’s pretty likely when you’re canoeing), having the ability to light a quick fire is a priority so that you can get dry.

Making a natural shelter can be hard work and if the weather is not harsh making sure you stay hydrated is key to maintaining your brain function, so getting the fire on for boiling water could be as important as getting the shelter built. Fire is such an important tool for survival; boiling water, warming your body, cooking food, signalling for help to name just a few, that knowing different ways of lighting could arguably be the top survival skill to practice.

Starting a fire can be done with a whole range of different techniques and people have written whole books on the subject so I like to try and keep my skills fresh by mixing techniques up a bit. Generally, I avoid a lighter and matches as I’m pretty sure how those work (though writing this, a one-match fire is something I should practice) and generally using a ferro rod is my main choice of getting things going. Over the years I’ve done bow drill, tried hand drill (not successful) and flint and steel but it’s not often I get to practice these as we’re normally rushing to the next job on the to-do list and a quick fire is what's needed.

A slightly shortened trip to the woods meant that I found some time to have a little play with my flint and steel and as my stock of char cloth was low,  I also took the opportunity to make some more char cloth. Char cloth is great as it takes a spark easily and then this can be used to ignite your tinder. It’s such a simple way of making something from recycled materials as well (100% cotton in a tin with a small hole placed on the fire) and you can carry a lot of char cloth in a small tin.  I enjoy that process of collecting tinder and gathering what you need for a fire, so while the char cloth was on the fire I gathered a bit of bulrush and some dry bracken just so I could demo it for the camera.

If you fancy watching the full video then it’s here: https://youtu.be/Vx2r1KZrc4k

The char cloth only took a few strikes to ignite but the bulrush was a bit damp and took longer to start going and it all seemed to work out well and I soon had a flame. It’s always satisfying to get fire from basic tools. I’m hoping to get some more time to practice these skills in the next few weeks now the evenings are longer and I’ve some quality time in the woods coming up so prime practising time.