A thought on fire/lighters/knives

I have been doing fine with a couple petroleum jelly soaked cotton balls and two mini bics.

Most important, keep your sleeping bag dry. Easily done.

I also use the cotton balls with petroleum jelly instead of wax. Melting wax is fun, but cleaning the pan after isn’t. Plus, then I have petroleum jelly for chapped lips or whatever.

The jelly balls work to, I just think that storage wise they are a bit messy so I noted my personal preference. Either “tinder” works no doubt. The only thing I would say is that it’s harder, not impossible, to light those jelly balls, after they soaked, than a what is a solid pad of wax… Until I tear it and expose some combustible fiber that lay beneath. That waterproof nature is the main advantage I see to the wax method. And yes me be paranoid due to personal experience.

Regardless. We agree we need tinder. The knife issue remains. Getting relatively dry fuel to put on the man made tinder is an issue in that situation. That can easily require batoning wood. That is where the knife equation comes in. A whopping 4oz to get you the dry wood you need to put in either the jelly balls or was pad? We can both bring our balls or pads… They won’t light legit wet wood, you need to get to the dry wood. Is 4oz of. Knife a reason? Maybe my bear hypothermic experience is saying it’s worth it?

As for cleaning the pan, for wax, no worries. That’s why I use a double boiler method (cheap ass glass bowl I never have to really clean because it sits in a pot full of water for various craft projects that inclulude this survival one. ;) )

I carry a few of these, a lighter and a backup lighter. My hiking partner carries a few more, another lighter and some matches.

I think Ken’s point about keeping the insulation dry is important. I’m also fairly conservative when choosing a shelter system. If I got cold and wet I think my first line of defense would be shelter, insulation and maybe some warm water/tea/food. Fire as a heat source would be a secondary strategy if I somehow lost my shelter and insulation.

A bag to keep my stuff dry weighs a lot less than a knife, tinder and firestarting redundancy. But location is a big factor too.

Carry enough insulation

Keep it dry

You can become hypothermic trying to start a fire in difficult conditions.

Cold hands become useless quickly. Cant do anything with gloves on, so they must come off. Goes downhill really fast.

You can forget about working a lighter for sure. Been there. Simply wasnt possible. Ive skipped cooking dinner a few evenings because it wasnt possible.  I should have eaten before sun got too low, and the rapidly dropping temps with wind made it too hazardous to try to cook.  Just had to get in insulation and get warm.

Stove and fuel makes great firestarter btw.  Really no need for extra, just redundant.

I’ve never tried to baton wood and I don’t think I own a knife that would be capable of it. It seems, from having split wood using sturdier tools, that it would require a great deal of effort. I’ve never worried about it because there always seemed to be so much dead wood that is off the ground because of blow downs.

I am already carrying too much weight for fire-starting because I use a Zippo* instead of a something reasonable. I could probably think of a justification (the exposed wheel might be easier to turn with cold hands?), but mostly it’s because I like to use a Zippo. I suspect people are that way about knives also.

* I also carry a Bic, because it’s much less weight that carrying extra fuel for the Zippo that always runs dry.

@MJH, it’s actually not that difficult. I do it regularly in the back yard when I am using the fire ring. If I am turning big wood into little sticks, especially for kindling, I find it provides more control, and is thus safer, when I get to pieces that are say 1 inch across. The trick is to know your knives and what grinds are better. Any solid knife can baton but, if you are talking light weight knives that are between 2-3mm thick, you would prefer a Scandinavian, Saber or Convex grind over a tall flat grind like a kitchen knife.

The reason I mention it is because, yes finding dead wood can be easy, but if your dead wood is wet the lighter alone, often even with dry tinder, will not catch. One of the main reasons for batoning in the field isn’t just to make smaller pieces of wood, it’s to expose the inner dry wood so it will ignite. A “situation” that requires a fire for survival often involves water/snow and so this needs to be taken into account. Man made tinder alone will not cut it under those circumstances.

As someone else said your sleep system and shelter should be your first line BUT your gear getting wet is a matter of when, not if, regardless of your preparation.

Now of course the above also depends on where you are backpacking. If you are on well used trails, near a place where you have cellphone contact etc. it may not be as necessary because you can get help more readily. PA however has weird camping rules.

If I want to do what they call “primitive” camping I have limited choices. I can do the AT of course, a handful of State Parks where I have to use their designated camp sites, other than that my only other option, legally, are the State and National forests.

Those places are vast and due to the geography many are “deadzones” for cellphones. Places like State Game lands, where “average” people go more often, are off limits to camping in order to stop professional trappers from setting up trapping camps. The same applies to State Parks because most don’t have State established camp sites which is required by Law. Due to the combination of geography and DCNR laws/regulations you need to be a little more self reliant in PA if you want to backpack for any length of time, imo, if you want to camp legally.

@ John S

For my summer solo treks, I carry an itty bitty blade that is good for cutting cord and I assume I will not be separated from my fuel and stove but even if the worst case happened, I could do OK overnight in an unplanned bivoauc.

In winter, the worst case could be very bad indeed, so I  do carry a Mora fixed blade which I can use to baton wood, a lighter as primary ignition and at least one backup ignition, as well as vaseline soaked cotton balls. Of course to really make use of the fixed blade, I would need to decide several few hours before dark that I need to spend the night in a survival situation.  It takes time to find wood suitable for a baton, find a place to shelter the night, find raw materials for tinder, kindling, fuel etc etc.

You do not really need much of a knife to baton wood for emergency situations. Inspired by a bushcraft video I saw on the web, I used one of our butter knives to baton some wood in my backyard.

There have been several threads on batoning on BPL including this one I started about using fixed blade knives with Boy Scouts.

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/morakniv-companion-for-scouts-to-practice-batoning-with/

@btolley I should added what you did “season” matters. I wouldn’t be overly concerned with bringing a fixed blade in summer. It is indeed more an issue if it’s winter in general OR spring/fall at elevation where temps can drop to dangerous temperatures when combined with wind and/or moisture. Heck “spring” in PA this year came with winter temps in the “low lands” of the Philadelphia region. It really confused the plant life.

I have also done the butter knife baton, just as an experiment. Another option, though time consuming, is finding a suitable piece of wood and then whittling one end into a wedge. I did that once using my Opinel No. 9.

I totally agree with @John S’ post. A suitable knife (not oversized) is an indispensable emergency tool. IMO, razor blades and small knives useful when things go as planned or you are in mild conditions but not emergencies. I will add one thing: PRACTICE: Try building a fire when you are soaking wet and have to dig out a firestarter and tinder from your pack.

@rcmike practice is indeed important. I assume most I us here have “practiced” for a backpacking trip by hiking in the rain, snow, extreme heat. We have practiced setting up our shelters and tested them on overnights, tested our stoves in the back yard.

Practicing fire starting under bad conditions is equally important. You have all the time in the world if it’s a pleasant evening with friends, but if it’s raining, you are wet and cold, your potential fuel is wet and possibly frozen, that fire is something else entirely. Maybe it’s my time in the Army but in my experience Murphy always comes a knocking, it’s just a matter of time.

I understand the “you don’t really need a full-sized knife” UL dogma.  But I had one bad experience in unexpected freezing rain conditions when the little knife on my Leatherman Squirt simply was not up to the task of finding kindling.  (Also, I would disagree that you cannot find dry kindling in such conditions- well, in most terrain, at least- but you do need a real knife to get to it.)  So, a Mora, a firesteel, and a few cotton balls has been my entire emergency equipment for a while, now.  And no, I have never needed it again, but I have been scarred, so I still carry it.  The fire steel is backup, and the only redundant gear I carry- a Bic is my primary fire source.

Some Australian people get lucky:

Woman survives 6 nights lost in Australian wilderness after falling, being knocked unconscious

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/06/07/woman-survives-6-nights-lost-in-australian-wilderness-after-falling-being-knocked-unconscious.html

I usually hike in the wet side of the Cascades and Olympics. Fire can be a life saver with little strong sunlight to dry things out. Like all “ten essentials” items, it runs up against the core UL practice of taking nothing that won’t be used.

I have several layers of fire starting items and can tune it to the season, risk factors of a particular hike, solo vs group, etc. I always carry a folding pocket knife, so that covers part of the found tinder/kindling options.

• Mini  Bic for general use, backed up with an Exotac polyStriker fire steel and Tinder Quick tabs in a spy capsule. I have a “survival keyring” with the Exotac, spy capsule, whistle and single AA LED flashlight that is always in a pocket (plus the knife). The fore steel counts as a signal device too. I usually stop there.
• Add an Orion signal flare/fire starter in a vacuum seal bag. (https://www.westmarine.com/buy/orion–fire-pit-pro-outdoor-fire-starter–17348459). Or just an ordinary 15 minute road flare. It works for signalling as well as fire starting and will get the wettest, punkiest fuel burning. Visible for miles from the air too. I had mentioned this here years ago and one group was saved from mass hypothermia starting a fire with one of these flares. Great for solo CYA.
• A small plastic can of UCO storm matches has been known to find its way into my pack.

Location, location, location.

Everywhere within 500 miles of me*, there are spruce trees with dry, dead branches on the lower trunk that are dry in summer, winter, rain and shine.  You can break them into twigs with your bare hands and the 1-2″ stuff burns decently long because of the very tight grain (100 rings to the inch).   One of my 13-gram MYOG saws is more useful for sawing off larger, 2 to 3-inch branches than a medium knife like a Mora.

*Except above tree line, where there’s no fuel for a campfire anyway.  Or, like GGG-AK next month, I’m on an Aleutian Island that has no trees.

Baton wood.  Baton Wood.  I keep hearing this and seeing it demonstrated on youtube with a 4-inch diameter round of wood.  How was that wood crosscut?!?  It would take a very capable saw to buck larger pieces of wood, so now we’re talking about 4-5 ounces of knife plus 10+ ounces of saw.

But, if somehow, I take that dry branch from the bottom of the trunk, and say, leave it out in the rain, I could still carve the wet surface wood off of it and then carve the drier wood under it into heavy tinder / light kindling.

I agree that carrying some tinder with you is very helpful.  I prefer a square of waxed cardboard which also serves as a canister stove base and a cutting board.

Also note that any kind of stove – Esbit, alcohol, canister, white gas – makes a GREAT fire starter.  I’ve previously described how after a sea kayak beach landing gone wrong, I wanted a fire on a remote ocean beach very quickly to warm my wife up.  I dug a trench, put the canister stove in it, laid driftwood across the trench, and when the wood was going well, removed the stove.  Quick, easy, effective.

As you said, and I think we all agree, location matters.

In terms of how to get the wood if the knife can baton it can “beaver chew” wood into shorter pieces. It’s similar in process. In this case you put the knife on an angle and then wack it with your baton. Alternate the angle, like you might with an axe, and work your way around the piece. You can even bring down saplings using this process, in the event dead fall is at a premium.

Maybe I’ll try to baton some wood one day if I ever get a fixed-blade knife. But it seems like the effort required would warm you with activity before you got the fire going.

I have a small folding saw that I use if I want wood larger than I can break conveniently. I plan to replace it with a QiWiz buck saw at some point. I assume I could also split wood with that by sawing down into the length of the log for a few inches and then hammering something wedge-shaped.

The Gerber Sliding Saw is about 4oz and very effective.

You can cut  small wood part way through and split it as you break it off. It doesn’t need to be pretty— you just want to expose the dry inner wood. Small dry branches can be broken by stomping on them while leaning on a log or rock. The real fire making is with much smaller stuff broken by hand and whittling fuzz sticks if you have a knife. Larger stuff can be end fed into the fire.

I always carry a Bic, but having a backup ignition could be a life safer- the little Boy Scout Hot Spark weighs all of 0.2 oz and throws an impressive amount of spark, a couple of tinder tabs fluffed up are easy to ignite

my new favorite “have to get a fire going” tinder is the Live Fire (Sport size)- it ignites easily with flame or spark and burns a full 15 minutes (it’s reusable too if you if only burn it for a couple of minutes)- 0.5 oz; my wife is not overly fire savy- but she can get a fire going with one of these :)

a decent knife has always been part of my kit

(Just curious) What is decent Mike?

I’m mostly concerned at lower elevations in the winter and anytime in the Japanese Alps, above treeline. For me for both I really like a stove to just quickly warm my hands and get a fire started. Don’t always bring it but the stove ensures some heat and potential for boiling water quick.

Ito- decent for me is: full tang (skeletonized), roughly 7″ overall (3″ cutting edge), spine is ground at 90 degrees to facilitate use of a firesteel and also is handy for making/scraping tinder; little over 3 oz with a light kydex sheath

I have another identical knife but w/ orange G10 scales that I use for elk hunting (the G10 scales add over an ounce, but more comfy in hand)

I almost always carry a small stove in the winter

Mike

Mike, sounds a bit like the White River Knives Backpacker I have.

Lengths:
Overall: 171mm (6.75″). Blade: 89mm (3.5″). Thickness 2.4mm (0.1″).
Weights:
Knife, naked: 57gr. Knife, wrapped: 73gr. Knife, in sheet: 111gr.

The knife is super beautiful in shape and how it is made. I bought it for winter / deep snow hikes here but I have to say, I have never used it since I bought it.

I have a small Spyderco Dragonfly 2 that I can easily open with cold hands, and it is more than I need. 60mm blade and weighs 30g (10z) without the metal clip. I keep on liking the idea for full tang no folding knife below treeline in deep winter, but again, have just never taken it. Looked at the Mora Eldris to make myself take it for those occasions but haven’t as of yet.

Stove is definitely a smart idea I think.

Ito- looks like they have some nice knives!

I’ll occasionally start a small warming fire and will use the knife- also for slicing cheese/salami/etc; for the most part though it goes unused; but so does my first aid kit :)