How to start fire with wet fire wood after it has been raining or snowing

Question

In the winter when there is snow or in the other seasons after it has been raining all the wood on the ground is wet. When I go to the forest or somewhere in the nature and need to make fire it is very difficult to burn these wet branches. I usually carry a cigarette lighter and some cardboard or newspaper to start fire, but when the wood is wet the paper burns fast and the wood still can't catch fire.

What can I do to start fire during the wet days? I don't want to use flammable liquids like gasoline or BBQ liquid as they can be sometimes dangerous or can spill in my backpack.

Answer 1

Water usually only penetrates the outer layers of dead wood, so your best bet is to use a knife or hatchet to strip away the damp outer layer.

1. Gather some kindling, dead wood that is about as wide as your finger or less.
   • Pine will usually make a great fire starter, the sap/resin is flammable after it is heated.
2. Use a sharp knife/hatchet to strip away as much bark and wet wood as possible.
3. If you can use a hatchet to split larger pieces of wood into kindling, this will expose the drier inner layers.
4. Start a small fire using the stripped kindling.
5. Use the small fire to heat and dry the larger pieces. It will put off a lot of steam/smoke, but the smoke should subside after a few minutes.

It will take a bit more time and effort to get it going, but once you have a nice bed of coals established you should be able to keep the fire going even if it starts to rain again.

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It is probably worth mentioning that there are some solid fire-starters that can be safely carried in your pack.

1. Magnesium Bars.
   • Use a knife to shave off a little pile of magnesium and you can start it with a spark. Magnesium burns at a pretty impressive temperature, but it doesn't help too much with damp wood because it tends to burn pretty fast.
2. Paraffin wax.
   • This is my favorite. It burns hot and slow, it also repels water so you don't need to worry about getting it wet.
   • Many brands of cheap paper cups are coated it a thin layer of wax and make excellent fire starters.

Answer 2

Doritos

Use Doritos (or other chips) as a fire starter. It turns out that the chemicals, powdered flavors, and oil in the chips make the perfect combination for combustion and snack. If you change your mind, you can always eat them.

See the videos demonstrating it:

• Camping Tip: A Doritos Fire [GoPro Video]
• Confirmed by Mental Floss

Read more:

• Use Doritos (or Other Chips) to Start a Fire at lifehacker
• Why Can I Use Doritos as a Fire Starter? at PonderWeasel

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Spaghetti noodles

You can use dry spaghetti noodle not only to light a candles, but also to start a fire. It's effective and cheap.

Answer 3

Whenever you are hiking collect the bark of fallen birch trees (Please leave the living trees alone!). It's white, looks like paper and burns really well. I had a bag of it in my backpack when I was a camp counselor because my boss had a rule that you could only burn wood you found.

Answer 4

Fire from wet log

This was actually one of the summer camp challenges in outdoor organisation I was at kid. It was called fire from a wet log. You were supposed to start a fire using only:

• knife
• axe
• matches
• piece of log that has been under water for 2 days

This assumes that the center of the log isn't completely damp. The solution was:

• chop down half of the log into big splinters
• use knife to make thin wood shavings of the rest of the log. Make lot of them to be really sure. The thinnest the fastest they burn, the more energy they release per second.

You now have a small piece of wet log, splinters and shavings. It's best to first pile shavings together, ignite them and only then start adding the splinters - this way you add them where they should be.

This small fire will already be able to ignite wet branches, provided they are dry inside.

Brushwood on tress (spruce and fir)

Spruce and fir trees ALWAYS have dry tiny dead brushwood on the bottom side of their branches. This burns really fast and hot - it's better than paper and leaves cinder that produces additional heat. Usually, the brushwood on the ground near these trees is also reasonably dry.

Birch bark

The white coverings of bitch trees burns insanely for some reason. Be careful to only harvest the tom layers not to damage the tree. Bark on dead branches works just as well.

Resin

Use small stick to harvest some resin to serve as a candle when starting the fire. This can save you precious matches. Resin burns hot and long. Do not use knife to harvest the resin - you would damage the tree and you will have problems cleaning the knife. Some sources claim resin dissolves in alcohol, but I really recommend not contaminating anything with it.

Use fire to dry more wood

This is probably obvious, but do not forget to put logs and branches around the fire (far enough to not ignite though) so that they are dry by the time you want to put them in. We used to make second barrier after stone barrier of wood. Shoes can go on the wood and wood can be used to prevent them from falling in the fire.

Answer 5

Dryer lint is also highly flammable and is great to keep to help light your kindling. In scouts we would make fire starter kits with dryer lint in a bag to keep it dry and also cardboard rolled up inside a tuna can and then covered in paraffin wax. These should hopefully burn long enough to light the wet wood. On a side note, I've also seen people carry road flares to light fires with. If a flare won't light a log, probably nothing will.

Answer 6

A tip for a magnesium striker: use a hacksaw blade, pulled along the magnesium bar set on the ground with the long small side down, and the pile of tinder on the side the blade is pulling from.