How to, Why to, and Where to Dig a Dakota Fire Hole

it's quite possible that at some point in the future you're going to need to have a fire but you're going to need it at a time when you don't want to be discovered as far as your location if that happens to you you will be very thankful to know just how to dig a dakota fire hole so stay with us in the next few minutes as i show you just how easy it is if you find yourself out in the wilderness and you need to make one for yourself don't go away [Music] [Music] do [Music] besides all of the ways to make fire there are actually quite a different number of types of fire that it's good to know how to make and today i want us all to learn the dakota fire hole or dakota fire pit now i will warn you on the front end it is pretty labor intensive to get started but then it has so many uh pros to knowing how to make this fire you will be very thankful that the really the only con is just that it's a lot of sweat on the front end once you've got it there it's going to be fantastic let me tell you some of the ways that i love this fire first of all it's fantastic if it's a windy day if we have gale force winds it's not even going to affect this fire that's pretty important also if i'm if i am in a rainy environment where everything is wet and soaked look around closely and find a place so don't don't just do this in haste but find a place where you're going to have non-stoney ground and not on a path where you're going to be walking a lot because one of the other benefits of this fire is that it's completely covert and once i make just eight or ten paces away from the fire and look back you won't even know that your fire is there because it will not go above the ground level that's fantastic if you need it to be that way but that's another reason why you wouldn't want it in the middle of where people might walk and and fall into it so keep that in mind so find a place that is relatively good ground some folks if they know that they're not going to have any dry wood to work with at all if they know that they only have wet wood then they go ahead and recognize that yes even though this is supposed to be completely smokeless in its perfect form if you're in a very wet environment with only wet wood you are going to have a bit of smoke and so in that case you'll want to try to build this kind of next to the base of a young tree not an old dry tree that could catch fire but a very young tree because any smoke that does come is going to travel up that tree and that's a a really good tip to keep in mind also if you don't have that at your disposal another way to kind of filter that smoke that might come up from wet wood would be if you can find a bush about like this one that's right above me with a lot of small leaves or leaves and berries that are living not dead those are going to kind of act as just a nice gentle filter so as any smoke that does come from this rises it doesn't get very far up into the sky to be a signal that anyone would notice from a distance if you're a total survivalist or into bushcraft you probably have done better than i have done i've just brought an old wool blanket that i don't mind getting dirty but if you have a tarp or a poncho that you've brought with you that's going to come in handy for me i'm going to put this under my knees to make it easier as i kneel and dig but a lot of folks like to spread out a small tarp where they can actually put the put the dirt onto the tarp as they dig and that makes it easy for them later to fill back in the hole so i'll do that right now get this under my knees and then i want to show you a couple of digging tools all right i'm going to show you the nice version down to the small version this is one of those wonderful little backpack trowels that you can you can do a number of things with as it comes out you can actually use the serrated edge to almost act as a little bit of a saw or an axe if you need it to but this is going to be almost a military grade trowel for digging that's going to come in very handy and you saw how it folded up so compactly to be in my backpack although it is a little bit heavier because it's so quality now i got this at a little store just this week and it is not made in the country of my origin here in the usa and it's not very high quality but it is small and it is light and it's kind of a littler version of that and it also is going to be handy so if you have something like this you'll probably get by in a pinch just don't have high expectations if there's any plastic on it at all because even though it has nice sawing edges or a bottle cap opener on the edge i can just about guarantee that once this hits rock it's going to get pretty flimsy and may even render itself useless at that point but i do like that it comes with almost a little pick on the side of it that you could pick into difficult areas and this uh tightens up to make it into like a little pickaxe like a gold miner would use or of course i can loosen it up and make it into just a digging trowel like you saw this bigger version okay i wanted you to just see those so you know the difference in quality and they all i didn't show you but all almost all of them come with some sort of a little packet that is easy to go in your backpack this is an even smaller version you can get it at walmart you've probably seen this before yes it could go on your belt or in your backpack and it's an even smaller little trowel that just clips up with a tight little grip right into there very small it shows the country of origin on the back and probably would be good for one or two uses before it's not usable anymore but it is small and light and in a pinch boy you would make it work now if you also have a really large knife like a k bar or something you can even use that as a digging tool or a small axe hatchet something like that you could use that so i and i've seen people use even a good stick which is so labor intensive i don't wish that on anyone but when you have to make it work you do so get whatever you can afford and use and i'm going to start digging right now and see how quickly we can get a nice roaring fire going what you're going to attempt to do next is dig two holes and the first one you're digging as as relatively small especially if you're by yourself a relatively small cylindrical shaft down into the ground 12 to 16 inches deep okay i know that's going to feel deep once you start digging you're going to work up a sweat really quickly even in good ground but 12 to 16 inches deep straight down and as narrow as possible i would say a good oh six or eight inches around is going to be fine if you do have a large crowd of people that happen to be with you you can make this really large but then you have to also dig down quite a bit deeper so we're just building for one or two folks right now and once we have that shaft we're going to dig another shaft at about a 45 degree angle starting oh a foot or a foot and a half over from that and dig it down so that the base of it reaches the base of the original hole that you've dug down about 16 inches now there are some hardcore bushcrafters out there who would tell you you could dig one of these in oh five to ten minutes and i'm gonna say that is absolutely too ambitious for someone like me and i'm not a wimp but i'll tell you what this is hard work and i would budget yourself at least 30 minutes to build this what you're going to aim for is building two cylindrical holes like you see i've got here we've got it fully finished now and and this hole if you did dig it straight down your this second hole go ahead and then just fill it in with your hand until you've got it at a nice 45 degree angle so that it has a hole that reaches all the way into the other main chamber at the very bottom is where you want them to connect you just want to try to preserve this little bridge between them without letting it get compromised because it cannot collapse or it kind of ruins the whole thing as you see i've got green limbs now the greener the better you want green in the bottom because they won't burn and they'll let that air vent come through from the other side so you see the air will come through at the bottom and they'll kind of act as a little grate so the air can filter up through the fire that will build on top of these green limbs that we'll put in the very bottom so once i have the green limbs in i'm going to go ahead and start with my little tinder bundle here with a vaseline cotton ball and putting it with just a little bit of hemp and that does a great job of catching that ember the ferro rod does a great job on these even in a stormy windy day so that's why i kind of like to use it rather than matches for something like this the drier the wood you can find the better and you can see i'm putting it in here but it has been raining today and we are fighting the rains so you're gonna see smoke when normally this does not end up being a very smoky fire at all so keep this in mind just these three things you don't want green wood in the main part of your fire and you don't want wet wood in the main part of your fire and you don't want wood that is very high in sap content or pitch like pine that might be very resinous like fat wood if you put that in here it's going to burn great which might be in your favor but it will cause smoke we have wet wood here today so it is causing some smoke but that's all right it's still making a great fire the air is coming in through the side and if the wind doesn't blow it in on its own you can always get your head right down there and blow some good air through that secondary hole and gets that fire going really well once you've got a good fire going you've got options now you can actually build up the side of this main chamber with about four big clods of dirt around the edges better yet though if you've got stones like i've found here i've found four good rocks to put right around the edge and the reason why i do this is because it needs to have some sort of little bit of ventilation here in the top if i were to set anything right on top of the hole it would just smother the fire so the fire the stones are going to help elevate whatever i put on top of them if this hole was small i would need very little to span that gap you could use anything you want you could use something metal you could use green limbs even from a tree again across the top to make your own homemade grate in a survival situation if you do happen to have a little barbecue grill or some sort of small little grill obviously you can see that's just about ideal for this where it spans across the four rocks and is suspended above the fire so it's still getting air down there and we could make a whole meal on this if we wanted to but for today i think i'll just make a good hot cup of tea and so we'll get the kettle out and a good cup nearby and some water i've brought with me that's already filtered and clean and this will be boiling in no time [Music] well the hard work of the day is done i'm proud to have a dakota fire hole that's successfully built and a hot cup of tea to enjoy it's time to settle in for the night i hope that was just a little bit easier than you expected it to be and it sounds fancier on the surface than it was in reality so now that you know how to do it i hope this week get one of your kids or your aunt or your uncle or somebody on the street to go with you and try to dig one yourself and you'll recognize just how easy it was share this episode though with a friend who might enjoy it with you and then take the time you know what i'm going to say take the time to go out and find somebody who needs you to be their blessing and bless them this week i'll see you next time bye bye [Music] when i was a lost land the lord sought my soul as gentle as a shepherd he brought me to the fold a master that made me akin to a king when i'm not even worthy to beg at his and feet do you know that would die in my stead who do you know that can rise from the dead he took hell from my future gave me heaven forever oh i serve him cause i don't know any better oh i serve him cause i don't know any better [Music] you

Channel: PREPSTEADERS

Views: 33,695

Rating: 4.9722314 out of 5

Keywords: Survival, Homesteading, Prepping, Preppers, prepsteaders, wisdom creek, Dakota Fire Hole, Dakota Fire Pit, Dackota, Digging, Covert Fire, Underground Fire, Fire Hole, Hidden fire, Campfire, Ferro Rod Fire, Bushcraft Fire, Fire on a windy day, How to build a fire in the wind, Wet wood, Fire shaft, air hole, Survival fire, Kindling fire, survival skills, wilderness survival, femininity

Id: D-mRRAXbuK0

Length: 16min 3sec (963 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 14 2020