In this episode of the Primitive Camping & Bushcraft Podcast, Chris Speir breaks down the essentials of building a fire kit, emphasizing why multiple fire-starting methods are crucial for any outdoor adventure. He shares practical advice on selecting and using various fire-starting tools, including BIC lighters, ferro rods, char cloth, and more, ensuring you're always prepared, no matter the conditions.
Fire is one of the most important survival essentials, and having a reliable fire kit can make or break an outdoor adventure. In this episode, Chris Speir takes a deep dive into assembling the ultimate fire kit, discussing essential fire-starting tools like BIC lighters, ferro rods, char cloth, magnification lenses, and fatwood. He shares personal experiences, practical tips, and insights on how to ensure you can start a fire in any condition. Whether you’re a beginner camper or an experienced bushcrafter, this episode will help you build a fire kit that works when you need it most.
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(upbeat music)
Welcome back to the Primitive
Camping in Bushcraft Podcast.
My name is Chris Speir
and I'm gonna be your guide
to enjoying the great outdoors.
So today we're going to talk about
the importance of a fire kit.
Last week we discussed
how to make a bow drill
from start to finish.
And that was a very,
that was a very, a lot longer than our
typical video podcasts.
But today we're gonna
read through the book again.
And if you want to join along, you know,
go ahead and swing over to Amazon,
pick you up a copy of the Primitive
Camping in Bushcraft
book, it's also available
on all major retail outlets.
And right now on Amazon,
it's like $14.42 a copy.
So it's a good deal.
If you're able to get a copy of it,
if you don't have a copy,
but anyway, how are things?
How are you?
How has God blessed you this week?
I know it's only Monday
morning, but you know, still,
God could bless you on a Monday morning
and have you enjoy the rest of your week.
It can really help
you along in your week.
But we're gonna talk about the importance
of a fire kit today.
So let's get right into it.
A fire kit is a collection of items
that can be used to start a fire.
Duh, I mean, hello.
So how many times you
ever get out into the woods
and you know, you only
brought one thing with you.
You know, you only brought
like a cigarette lighter.
Now I've done it before,
I've gone out into the woods,
I've gone camping and all I
had was one cigarette lighter
or one, you know, a big lighter or
whatever you wanna call it.
And that's a feist.
But I guess the whole
premise of a fire kit
is to have a backup in the
event of you flipped your kayak
and you fell into the
water and you lost your stuff
or it got wet, it got ruined, you know,
anything to that nature.
And so the premise behind
this is to be able to have
more than one way of starting a fire.
You know, having more
than one way of being able
to dry yourself out, cook
your food, boil your water,
keep you warm, it's
having more than one way
to do all these things.
Fire kits do not have to be complicated.
So they don't have to be complicated.
You don't have to
include 30 different methods
to start a fire.
Concentrate on easy
methods so you can use
in case of emergency or
in case your lighter runs
or how to fluid or you lose it.
Start a fire in various ways
in the event that you
lose your ferro rod.
I cannot stress it enough
that you should practice
different ways because
things happen, life happens.
Murphy is coming after you.
Murphy's law is going
to happen, you know.
And always make sure that you can get out
and practice with
every item that you pack
or every item that you bring, you know.
And then we're gonna go over a few
different things here.
And that's really going
to clarify some stuff.
And you know, this
will be the second time
through this whole
book and podcast series
that we talked about a fire kit.
But this time we're
really gonna take a deep dive
and we're really
gonna get into the weeds.
And I'm thinking that
we're pretty much gonna read,
not word for word because
I don't wanna do it word
for word out of the book.
But we're really gonna take a deep dive
into why and what and how, all right?
So first up, one of the
items that you can bring with you
and have multiple of
and probably, you know,
never have an issue is BIC lighters.
You could buy a pack of 10 lighters,
have one in a fishing
box, one in a hunting box,
one in, you know, your pair of pants,
one in a shirt pocket, jacket pocket,
one in your backpack, one in a fire kit,
one in your whatever.
You can have 10 different
places that you got a lighter.
And let me be honest with you,
the BIC lighter is the number
one single most cost effective
and reliable way to start
a fire in modern history.
It really is, it is the
easiest, most disposable,
most reliable way to start a fire.
And other brands are nice,
but the BIC lighter
is the top of the line.
So, but, you know, I'm not
endorsing any kind of a company,
but the product speaks
for itself, you know?
You get down into 30
degrees as trouble lighting,
you know, but you gotta keep it warm.
I put that here in the
book where it says that
BIC lighter won't operate too well
below freezing temperatures.
So you have to keep it warm
and also won't work when it's wet,
but you can simply dry it off
and get it throwing
flames again in no time.
Several survival
schools out there go through
teaching people how
to, your lighter got wet,
dry it out, and here's a minute drill.
You know, they do these
certain things, you know,
I think a lot of it's just flash,
but you know, it's something to learn
and I'm not gonna down it.
It is something to learn
how to dry out your lighter
to get you started.
But I don't.
(laughing)
Anyway, maybe right along.
There's an old saying,
especially when I was in the military,
I was like, two is one and one is none.
When camping or hiking, keep
one lighter on your person,
one in your fire kit
and one in your backpack.
This way you will have
a backup to the backup.
Like I just said earlier,
you can throw it in your tackle box,
you can throw it into your lunch box,
you can throw it into whatever,
you can put it in all
these different places.
You know, before heading out on a trip,
I recommend modifying your bit lighter.
Now, everybody should know this,
everybody should probably do this,
but go ahead and remove
the metal child safety ring.
When your hands are cold
and you lose the dexterity in your hands,
and it happens, it don't
have to be extremely cold
for that to start happening,
but it will happen.
But if you start losing the dexterity
in your hands,
because your hands got cold,
it's gonna become difficult to depress
that little metal ring in
order to strike the wheel.
And that is the honest guy's truth.
That has happened to me before.
And I'm telling you now,
take that metal ring off.
Take that child safety thing off.
Get it off of there.
So wrap duct tape around your lighter.
This is another tip.
Wrap duct tape around
your lighter for later use.
The tape can, it serves many uses.
You can use it as like a fire extender.
You can light it and use it as a match.
You could light the duct tape.
It burns slowly and long,
and it saves the fuel in your lighter
if you're that worried
about over using your lighter.
Personally, I don't think
I've ever used a lighter
until it ran out of fluid.
I have cracked the lighter before,
but I have not.
I have lost a lighter before.
Matter of fact, the
last camping trip I was on,
I lost a lighter.
Set it down.
I always use a bright
orange or bright green
or something bright that you could see
if you set your
lighter down on the ground
because it'll be easy
for you to recognize,
hey, I set this dude down.
I lost it, and now we
can know what to look for.
And it's easier to find a bright orange,
bright green, hot pink lighter.
Excuse me.
So next up is going to be char cloth.
Char cloth is
essentially a small scale variation
of charcoal.
This handy material is
usually made from the organic fibers
such as cotton and old denim jeans.
Side note here, denim
jeans seem to work amazing
with this method.
Now, you can also use other materials
such as cotton balls and tampons.
There's a big thing about tampons,
and I did a video on how to start a fire
with a friction fire with a tampon,
and that's what
catapulted me into the position
that I'm into today
because of a little hack.
And this little hack was pretty cool.
A lot of people, it got
me all the way up to MTV's
Ridiculousness, and that
was like 20 seconds later
of being ate alive by them folks.
I mean, they really ate me up.
But anyway, you can
make it out of denim jeans.
Denim jeans is awesome.
You can even substitute natural materials
like dried moss, leaves,
certain fungi, punk wood.
Punk wood is the spongy
rotten wood that you find
in an old standing dead tree.
You can use broken
down or processed barks
like willow or poplar.
Process, the process
of making charcoal off
is not very hard.
You'll need a little tin
can like an Altoise tin can,
and you'll put your material in there,
which is usually cotton
t-shirt, cotton towel,
denim jeans, something to that nature.
You'll put it inside the tin can,
and then you will set
that can in the fire.
You don't have to poke a hole in it.
You can if you want to.
I mean, there's so many
technicality police out there
that they love
policing everything that I do.
It's almost like I got
a bunch of fact checkers
checking everything the
moment I say something
or do something, and it was like,
you don't have to have, I know that.
I put the hole in the can on the video
just to say you can put a
hole in the can on the video.
You don't have to if you don't want to,
but you can if you want to.
Hello, it's not that difficult.
People, man.
So, but anyway, the
process of making charcoal off
involves the material
undergoing pyrolysis,
P-Y-R-O-L-Y-S-I-S, pyrolysis.
So what happens is it's heated up.
It doesn't combust, but it heats up
and it gets rid of all
the gases in the material
and it leaves it as charcoal.
Now, that is a thermo
chemical decomposition
of organic matter, all right?
For all the people out there
that's going to jump into my comments
and tell me I don't know
what I'm talking about.
But anyway, all right, so you could tell.
I'm not being negative.
I'm not being negative.
I'm just, I know how
the comment sections work.
A lot of people being like,
you don't know what you're
talking about, blah, blah, blah,
you know, the square root of pie.
And, you know, I actually have
a strawberry cream cheese pie out there.
That's more like a king
cake and oh, Lord is good.
Oh, Jesus knew what he was doing
when he created strawberry cream cheese.
And you know, anyway,
anyway, moving right along.
To make charcoal cloth,
you're gonna need a fire.
You're gonna have to have an Altor's can
or any kind of tin can or
any kind of metal container.
You can use your metal
container with a lid, a metal lid.
You know, you can use a cup with a lid
and that one made charcoal off
and you could do it
like that as well too.
You know, put it in the fire,
let it cook for about 15 minutes.
You'll see all the smoke coming out
and all the gases.
Like if you poked a hole in it,
you're gonna see the gases come out
and it's gonna seem kind
of like it's under pressure
and the flames will catch on
and it'll seem like a blowtorch.
It's actually kind of cool.
So to watch and
watching that is pretty cool.
But once it's done, you
know, about 15 minutes,
once the smoke's gone,
then it is ready for use.
Let's set it to the
side, let it cool down.
And then once it cools down,
then it is ready for use.
Misspoke just said.
But once the smoke stops,
it is ready to use or
ready to cool off to use,
I should say.
How do I say that
without everybody just like,
misconstruing what I'm trying to say?
A lot of people
misconstruing what I'm trying to say.
So another item you
could carry in your bag
is the flint and steel.
You've seen these things,
the little D rings or C rings
made out of some kind of carbon steel
and they hit it with a flint
and a piece of chert,
something to that effect
and it leaves a spark.
And then you just collect that spark
and try to get that
spark onto your char cloth.
There we go, char cloth again.
Char cloth is instrumental in
using with the flint and steel
as the easiest way to
actually get a fire started.
Another item which is
pretty cool that you can use is
a pencil sharpener.
A pencil sharpener is a
pretty cool little gadget.
Now, in the book,
I did take a picture of a
cheap 98 cent pencil sharpener
in the book and you can use that,
but I'm here to tell you
it's probably gonna last
that one trip because it
is a cheap thing for school
and it's supposed to be
used for regular pencils,
but you can put sticks in there,
you can put a piece of fat wood in there
and you wind that thing around
and it's going to actually start you
by making paper thin little shavings.
It's gonna actually
give you more surface area
to start your fire and it's
easier to use your bait light
or your ferro rod or
something to that effect
to start your fire.
But break or cut a small
stick about the size of a pencil,
fat wood, fat wood's perfect.
Bring that thing in
there, twist it around,
take them shavings
and set them to the side
as a fire tender.
Now, it's not really
necessarily a tender,
it's more like a kindling,
but it's real fine and
real nicely processed
where you could
actually start a fire with it.
If it was fat wood,
then you could just
throw a spark to it directly
and you'll be able to start you a fire.
Now, which that's gonna
bring me to the next item,
which is the ferro rod.
The ferro rod is amazing.
I've done so many videos and
I dedicated a whole episode
to this podcast on ferro rods.
And ferro rods are just
amazing little creatures
and I detail them on page 148,
but the ferro rod is one
of the most efficient tools
available when it
comes to starting fires,
next to a bait lighter.
They come in all shapes and sizes.
They, you know, I
usually have one in my pocket,
like a, I take it out on a key chain
while I go when I go home.
But, you know, I got a little nanotech
or yeah, I think it's
nanotech and it's a small one
and it's great.
USO, UST or whatever it
is, they have a UTS or,
I forget what it is,
but they have a good emergency one
and there's orange, you know,
and we did a whole episode,
whole episode of
ferro rods here recently.
So if you want to click
that little link up above here
and then go check out
the ferro rod section.
You know, most ferro
rods allow you to start
more than 20,000 fires over
the course of its lifespan.
And that's a lot of fires.
I mean, you know, and not
necessarily 20,000 fires,
but it allows you to
strike it about 20,000 times.
So each ferro rod, you
know, for 20,000 strikes
potentially can have 20,000 fires.
That's a lot of fires.
That means that your ferro
rod is gonna last a long time
and it is extremely, extremely reliable.
Now, another item that you want to use,
I got two of them here.
One's a magnification lens and one's a
magnification mirror.
And, you know, the lens is
like, you can double it up.
You can use it as
something to see for like first aid
or to read or something to that effect,
but you can see to get
splinters out or whatever.
But anyway, a
magnification mirror will actually do,
allow you to signal and
then it would allow you
to look in your eye or along your face
or something to that effect or, you know,
look now if you got to check your
hemorrhoids or something,
you know, whatever, whatever it is
that you need a mirror for, you know,
even starting a fire.
But the lens is self-explanatory
because it's usually
like a magnifying glass
or Fresno lens or
something to that effect.
And you take these things
and you amplify the
sun's rays on a bright day
and you amplify the sun's rays
and it will actually give you
enough heat to start a fire.
Now, what I've found is
that it actually works great.
A magnification lens
and a magnification mirror
works hand in hand with char cloth.
I mean, they work
perfect with char cloth.
And, you know, so char cloth is another,
it shows itself here as to
how versatile it really is
how versatile, how
amazing that stuff really is.
But a magnification
mirror is a magnification lens
that, you know, serves multiple purposes.
Like I was saying a while ago,
you can use it to start
a fire on a sun today,
but you can also use it
for signaling if you're lost
and you can use it to mirror if you need
to get something out of your eye
or have an urge to shave
while you're in the woods.
I'm never gonna have the urge to shave
while I'm in the woods,
unless I'm trying to
make a fly for fishing.
Not going to shave.
I didn't even shave
for the podcast, dude.
I mean, I can't stand shaving anyway.
When I left the military, I
swore I was done with shaving,
but I still cannot
grow more than a goatee.
I still can't grow more than a goatee
because of the beard aggravation.
I got some videos out there.
I did a beard for several months,
but it really bothers me.
It starts itching and I
just cannot do the beard thing.
So, but anyway, so, you
know, this is one thing
that there's other stuff
that you could put in here
for fire kit.
You could put a pack of
Blackbeard fire plugs.
I use those things religiously.
I should, well, I use them constantly.
If I go into the woods, most of the time,
I don't even feel like, you know,
just farting around with it.
I'll just throw a Blackbeard down there.
I use my ferro rod and I start a fire
right then and there.
Now, you could use other things like,
I've made fire biscuits in this book.
I outline how to make fire biscuits.
You know, you're using
the alcohol, not alcohol,
but the makeup remover pads,
the little small flat discs.
And you're taking those and
you're saturating them in.
You can do it Vaseline, you
can do it in lighter fluid.
I did it in lighter fluid.
And then you melt some wax
and you drop them things down
in the wax.
So the wax is essentially
sealing in the lighter fluid
or the whatever you're wanting to use
to light your fire.
Now these things, all you
do is you just break it,
put a spark to it and voila, you're done.
You're what?
You're done.
I mean, it's gonna
start you a very good fire.
Let's see, there's other methods there.
You know, fatwood is gonna
be one of the best things
that you can find.
It's all natural.
It's not gonna let you
down and it's waterproof
and it runs a,
it's all natural and it
runs anywhere you have,
I mean, it happens
anywhere you have pine.
So any resinous or any
pine or stuff like that,
it will have fatwood.
You know, if you find you a dead branch,
all the sap just ran down
and you find you a dead tree,
usually the heart of the tree is fatwood.
And I mean, it is amazing stuff
and you can start so many fires with it.
And you can have one
piece about this long
and you just scrape a bunch shavings.
And I do almost all the
videos on starting fire.
I use fatwood shavings and
I'll take and I'll put shavings
out on the wet ground and
start a fire in the wet.
I did it in the snow.
Most recently we had six inches of snow
and I scraped snow to the side.
I scraped the fatwood
down onto the ground
and I threw a spark at it and it lit
in the middle of the snow
and the middle of the wet.
And you know, it don't
take much to start a fire.
It doesn't matter if it's hot, it don't
matter if it's cold,
it don't matter if it's wet
and it don't matter if it's dry,
you can still start a
fire in all those conditions.
You just have to know how to do it.
And then, but a fire kit
is gonna increase your odds
or chances of starting your fire
no matter what the conditions are.
A fire kit is gonna
actually help you do what you need
to do to start a fire.
It's gonna allow you to
carry different things.
Now, do you have to carry
15,000 things in a fire kit?
No, you do not.
Can you just make a fire
kit out of an Altoise tin can?
Yes, you can.
Can you make a fire kit
that hangs around your neck?
Absolutely.
Can you use matches in a fire kit?
Yes, you can.
It doesn't matter.
There's no wrong way or right way, guys.
That's what I'm trying,
this whole show is about.
There is no right way or wrong way
to doing the things that you enjoy doing.
If you enjoy going out into the woods
and you enjoy doing certain things,
you don't have to listen to
all these survivalist gurus
that get paid hundreds of dollars
for a stupid survival course
when you can just read
a book and go out there
and do it yourself.
Yes, I said it.
Now, are you gonna do
it as effective as them?
Probably not, but you're gonna learn.
In every trip that you
go, you learn something,
you go out there, you learn some more,
you go out there and you learn some more.
And pretty soon, you
gain the same experience
that they did by reading books
because they started
off by reading books, too.
So you don't worry
about what somebody thinks
or somebody says.
They get into your comment section
and start leaving comments
about how you feel about this
and how they feel about that.
Who cares?
Bye-bye, see ya,
whatever it is, what it is.
God loves you, God loves all of us.
God forgives all of us for our sins,
the whole nine yards.
But you don't have to
worry about what people think.
You are going out into
the woods to enjoy yourself.
You are going camping to relax in nature.
You're going to make a lot
of discoveries along the way.
You're gonna learn things.
If you've never done this
before, just get out and do it.
I've had people get in touch with me
and they're like, look,
I'm not used to doing this.
How do I do this?
You first, by loading your
car up and driving out there,
the first trip, you're gonna
take way, way too much stuff.
You're gonna take so much stuff with you
that you wish you'd left home.
But on that next trip, guess what?
You're gonna think about
what you brought the last time
that you didn't use.
Then you're gonna narrow it down.
You're gonna go.
You're still gonna have too much stuff,
but you're going to go
and it's gonna be lighter
than it was the first time.
Then you come back from that
trip, you're like, all right,
so what can I double up on?
What has more than one purpose?
And so you start doubling
up with different things.
You got a ferro rod, okay?
You got a ferro rod, you got a lighter.
Let's take two or three lighters.
Let's say the ferro rod at the house.
It's perfectly fine, you can do that.
You can do whatever it
is that you wanna do.
There's no right way,
there's no wrong way.
There's only an end result.
If you want an end result,
you're gonna do whatever it
is in between to achieve it.
That's it.
Don't worry about
what people think or say.
You get out there, you have fun,
you enjoy what you want to do,
and you don't worry about the rest.
The rest will take care of themselves.
So, but anyway,
that's it for the fire kit.
There's a million different things.
You can make a fire kit
a million different ways.
You can put matches in
there, you can do whatever.
And you can make a fire
kit inside your char cloth,
10, and that'd be your fire kit.
You don't have to have a million
different things to do that.
So anyway, all right guys,
thank you so much for joining me today.
Hey, if you don't mind,
please head on over to
the link in the description
of the video and this podcast.
Pick you up a bag of coffee,
I think it's like six bucks, eight bucks,
something like that.
And I get a couple of bucks,
I get a dollar or something
like that off of everything,
all the coffee.
It's no big deal.
Just head on over
there and get you a coffee,
and then go to Amazon,
pick you up a copy of
"Premier Camping in Bushcraft,"
and it's like 14 bucks.
Then head on over to Facebook
and join the Facebook group,
"Premier Camping in Bushcraft,"
where we got like 7,000
like-minded individuals
that enjoy really
getting out into the woods
and doing something with their skills
and learning new skills.
But with that being
said, I'll see you next time.
I thank you so much for
taking time out of your busy day.
I thank you so much for all your time.
Thank you for your patience.
And I just hope you have a wonderful day.
God bless you.
(upbeat music)