Thank goodness that...
... my survival is not dependent on my fire-making skills.
It's getting colder around here... so it's time to fire up the fireplace. I decided that this year I want to use real wood instead of the phony sawdust & wax logs.
I got semi-ambitious and picked up a 0.75 cubic foot bag of firewood from the local grocery store. Figured hey, no problem. I had Rhianna and her best friend with me and figured we'd roast marshmallows since that's a fun thing to do in winter. Twisted up a few pieces of newspaper into a nice little roll to go amongst the two logs to act as starter. Nice in theory, right?
Wrong.
The wood never started.
Even the newspaper didn't burn spectacularly well... took it a LONG time to catch... and it was slow to burn too.
We wound up roasting marshmallows over burning newspaper rolls. Heh.
The next night with just me and Rhi, we tried it again. THIS time I got some of the little firestarter sticks (basicly sawdust bound with wax. THOSE produced a goodly bit of flame. Quite nice actually.
But the wood?
Still no go. Or at least not any actual flames. I think it must have burned some because there is far less of it than there was to start with. All in all very disappointing. Rhi and I made s'mores over starter stick.
So just what DID I do wrong?
I clearly would not survive in the wild based upon my firestarting skills.
Although I DO know how to stave off hypothermia if I ever fall through the ice into freezing cold water. Take EVERYTHING off... cold wet clothes on in cold cold weather is a surefire way to die of hypothermia. At least the guy on http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/manvswild/manvswild.html says. (Saw this episode with my sister & her husband and mom & daddy over thanksgiving weekend-- we three girls about fell out laughing when he took it all off. Pity they didn't show the buns.)
It's getting colder around here... so it's time to fire up the fireplace. I decided that this year I want to use real wood instead of the phony sawdust & wax logs.
I got semi-ambitious and picked up a 0.75 cubic foot bag of firewood from the local grocery store. Figured hey, no problem. I had Rhianna and her best friend with me and figured we'd roast marshmallows since that's a fun thing to do in winter. Twisted up a few pieces of newspaper into a nice little roll to go amongst the two logs to act as starter. Nice in theory, right?
Wrong.
The wood never started.
Even the newspaper didn't burn spectacularly well... took it a LONG time to catch... and it was slow to burn too.
We wound up roasting marshmallows over burning newspaper rolls. Heh.
The next night with just me and Rhi, we tried it again. THIS time I got some of the little firestarter sticks (basicly sawdust bound with wax. THOSE produced a goodly bit of flame. Quite nice actually.
But the wood?
Still no go. Or at least not any actual flames. I think it must have burned some because there is far less of it than there was to start with. All in all very disappointing. Rhi and I made s'mores over starter stick.
So just what DID I do wrong?
I clearly would not survive in the wild based upon my firestarting skills.
Although I DO know how to stave off hypothermia if I ever fall through the ice into freezing cold water. Take EVERYTHING off... cold wet clothes on in cold cold weather is a surefire way to die of hypothermia. At least the guy on http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/manvswild/manvswild.html says. (Saw this episode with my sister & her husband and mom & daddy over thanksgiving weekend-- we three girls about fell out laughing when he took it all off. Pity they didn't show the buns.)