- Joined
- May 10, 2017
- Messages
- 736
Depends on the area and weather. I changed to a bigger knife myself. We were out on horseback once, in the middle of nowhere. A big snowstorm rolled in, mixed with rain, it lasted several hours, and got cold enough where we had to stop and make a fire, my buddy was freezing! Well everything was soaked! We tried a lot of different things, and couldn’t get anything going. Finally I was able to find some pitch wood, but I had hell prying it out! I was able to get enough to finally get the fire going. But having a decent size knife with the ability to pry and chop would have helped a lot. I’m no rookie, but I was soaked and cold!
What does a 6 inch blade weigh? The ones I make weigh around 18 ounces or less! I think that’s pretty light for the capability.
If you were getting pitch wood, I'll safely assume you were surrounded by pine trees. Get under those suckers, close to the trunk and collect all of those little dead branches and shoots coming off the trunk and larger limbs. I do not mean the pine needles. Get the smallest branch pieces you can. Typically they will be very dry due to the location on the tree. Combined with the fact that they are pine so they are going to have pitch in them, those suckers are usually hard not to light.
Two things about it however - get a lot of them because they burn like paper. And like paper, they don't throw off a ton of heat. More flash than substance. Use the large amount you have collected to keep feeding into the flame to keep it going while at the same time using that flash flame to get smaller kindling going. Even in snowy, rainy conditions, you should be able to keep a flame going long enough to dry and ignite some larger sticks. Build from there.
The most important thing is to get A LOT of those little sticks / shoots. You will never have too much, but it is unbelievable how much you can collect that still won't be enough. Use it to keep a small flame going to ignite the bigger fuel. Go slow and steady to build it into a good fire. Rush it in bad conditions and you go back to the beginning very easily.