The Survival Skill of Making Fire in the Rain

you're out it begins to rain and you need to get a fire started it's one question I get asked all the time how do you start a fire in the rain or if you're a little bit more advanced you might ask the question when I'm starting a fire and rain how do I protect it initially do I need to build some type of shelter over myself do I need to get sticks and build an awning the reality is that there are a few quick simple tricks that you can use all the time basic to advanced skill levels to get the job done so check them out so you can see that the rain is coming down the first thing you always want take into consideration is try to get under some type of cover now I don't mean build an actual shelter I just mean think about the vegetation above so if it's the wintertime or the fall there's no leaves left on the trees maybe get in an area that there's more pine that way you're gonna be a little bit more protected it's gonna just slow that rain down of course in tremendous thunderstorms that rain is gonna still pour through anyway but it's just giving you a little extra bit of protection from the rain and it's gonna make a huge difference second to go along with cover is if you can set up some type of shelter system it's something quick easy and effective what you need to remember is that emergency shelters don't need to be the Taj Mahal they just need to protect you from the climate around you something small quick easy and efficient to set up is gonna be your best bet now at this point I have two things in my favour I found a good area that has some heavier pine above me I also had an emergency shelter with me so I'm protected from the weather for the time being and I can also process all my material inside now I'm gonna go out and collect firewood most likely I'm not gonna find any natural tinder around here that is dry at this point so if you have something in your kit you can use all the better that's why we carry so many fire starting devices but if you don't have something in your kit you're gonna have to cut inside wood to get those dry shavings like we talked about last week in a video one thing that you do want to remember when collecting wood in this type of environment when it's wet is you want to collect the smallest material possible because that flame has to dry that material out before it starts to burn so smaller definitely definitely definitely I went out and collected some material you want to always remember that a nice big armful of material is going to be most ideal if you go with anything less than that what is gonna happen is once that fire starts raging you're gonna have run out and keep collecting material so just to put the time in if you have the time and you're not hypothermic or you don't immediately need that fire put them extra couple minutes and collect that material up front they'll make you like that much easier when you initially get your fire going what I also collected was a larger stick now this thing is bigger than my thumb not as big as my wrist but it was sitting there perched up against the tree as it fell down but when you crack it you can see really quickly that it's super dry inside so that's gonna be an absolute savior for us now when we decide that we're gonna create shavings I don't want to take this outside area because this here is already wet I want to discard that so I'm just going to come off to the side here and I'm gonna just get rid of that but really quickly when I get down inside then what you can see is that we have dry material so I can begin to process this material super effectively again I'm just sliding down on this piece of wood creating a whole bunch of shavings I'm gonna make my life super easy with this I'm not gonna try to make a feather I'm just gonna make shavings alright and I should be about where I need to be with shavings again softball-sized amount is going to be most ideal for us so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just put them in a pile at this point now again working with some efficiency we want to split this stick the reason why is if I go lay these on the wet ground they are going to just suck moisture in so if I split this stick in half what that's gonna do now is give me some where what we like to call a platform in order to build our fire upon and something that quick and that easy gives me a nice platform to lay those shavings on that I can start my fire all right so you can see at this point now I have my shavings laying on top of the stick it was a quick transition out we're gonna just go with some lifeboat matches right now emergency matches to get this started I'm gonna get this going but before I do this I also want to make sure I have that nice backstop that we like to talk about also much in our stack method so we're gonna get this started right away you got that down in there and now I can begin to take my wood it's gonna be wet which I know so we're gonna put smaller amounts on initially once I know that fire is burning and we're gonna just set that right on top again with the stack method which we talked about in other videos I can evaluate what's happening and while I'm watching that I can look through here there's smaller pieces of wood or larger pieces I can pull them out I have some sassafras in here that I know is gonna burn really well you could see how dirty my hands are that's all that muck coming off of there so we need to dry all that out before it's actually gonna burn so we need to just let this sit for a second and really start to catch these outside sticks I'm evaluating they're already burning I can get some more material on there now we have two sticks on my side burning so I'm just gonna process these down a little bit more and set them on top now at this point due to me not collecting enough material I'd have to go out and continue to collect but we're just gonna allow this some kind of burn here again we're just gonna manipulate that it's going to take longer than if it was a nice dry day that wood has to dry out in order to really catch okay so you see it's starting to catch now and it's gonna do a good job the good thing with wet wood like this it normally holds an ember a little bit better okay so we're gonna just let this go for a little bit I would collect more material and I am myself a sustainable fire in the rain and literally easy as that no there's a bunch of steps at one and remember we pick the good location number one to put our shelter number two we set up a shelter you didn't have the luxury of a shelter you're gonna want to figure something else out to process that material without any type of cover just is not the best best scenario at all you're gonna want to try to cover that my recommendation will be if you have no shelter look what direction the rains coming and normally it has a very slight breeze with it okay so you're gonna use your body to block that out but those shavings you got to make super quick them because they're gonna get wet and they're not gonna burn as well then once the thing is ready they're you're gonna want to make that base in order to protect the fire from the ground and then at that point get your shavings down and get your fire started I guess the moral of this story is that this is definitely doable you just need to think it through before you get started and protect your goods or your fire lay as much as you can until you actually gonna make that fire the last thing that I wanted to say about this though is you always want to carry some type of fire-starting device along not just to make spark or make flame but anything that's gonna help extend it is always gonna be a good idea even if you carry fat wood or birch bark or an extra bird's nest with you it's gonna eliminate needing to make shavings they can get damp and it's just gonna make you that much more comfortable out there knowing hey I can get fire and I can get it right when I need it so this was Dan walk with coal cracker bushcraft I hope you enjoyed this video I know I like videos like this because this is so realistic to put this in terms of what we teach all the time in this type of weather and this type of climate right now so I'm check us out a cool cracker bushcraft com if you haven't already click the subscribe button low and then til the next video stained woods

Channel: Coalcracker Bushcraft

Views: 532,295

Rating: 4.9523454 out of 5

Keywords: Coalcracker Bushcraft, Dan Wowak, Appalachian Bushman School, Camping, Backcountry Camping, Hiking, Survival, Bushcraft, Survival Skills, Bushcraft Skills

Id: 8lZcPzyg014

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019