Oh yeah! What'so hard about building a campfire? Just throw some wood in the fireplace, stove, or fire pit and light it! Right? WRONG! There are better ways, ways that make it easier and safer to light your fire. Doing it wrong can be frustrating and delay getting your fire going but, more importantly, it can be hazardous! In more than 40 years of camping I have seen many different ways of building campfires, some rather clever and successful and some definite disasters! I've seen more than one over-ambitious camper go home without any hair on his arms and missing his eyebrows after over-dousing a fire with gasoline. A well built fire will be safe, comfortable, and enjoyable. And it isn't that hard to do.
Most techniques for building fires can be used for campfires, fireplaces, and wood stoves. Getting a fire going quickly and easily usually depends on proper preparation. When building a campfire, always make sure your site is properly prepared. Clear the area for at least 5 feet around the fire pit and at least 10 feet overhead. When lighting fires in fireplaces and stoves check the dampers and flues and ensure there are no combustible materials on or near the device before igniting your fire. Proper techniques for starting a fire include the preparation and use of tinder and kindling to get the fire going, the adding appropriately sized fuel as needed.
The first step for building a campfire is to prepare your fire pit. One of the most common and iconic fire pits is the rock ring. Another useful option for use in the wilderness is Dakota fire pit. Always clear the ground around any fire pit for a radius of 5' to make sure your campfire stays where you want it. When using fireplaces and stoves it is always best to start with a clean space. Take care removing old ashes as they can sometimes contain hot spots! Be sure they are cold before putting them into any trash bins. As a firefighter I once responded to a dumpster fire caused by someone dumping hot charcoal in it.
To build a rock ring, gather enough rocks to make a circle about 3'in diameter, larger if you have a large group and need a bigger fire. Rocks about 8" or so in diameter are usually large enough to do the job but small enough to move without straining your back. Scrape the ground inside the rig to remove ALL combustible material and build up a berm along the inside of the ring to fill the gaps between the odd shaped rocks. You want to control the flow of air to your fire, not have it susceptible to every little ground breeze that blows by between the rocks!
If there are no rocks around, dig down a little bit and build a berm to make a fire pit. You need something to define the fire area and contain and control the spread of hot ashes once the fire gets going. A rock ring or berm also helps mitigate ground-level breezes that might have an adverse affect on your fire and control ashes as the fuel burns.
To build a Dakota fire pit, dig a hole about 1' in diameter and about 1' deep. Then make a smaller hole, 3-4" in diameter about 1' away and dig a tunnel from the top of the small hole the bottom of the larger hole at about a 45 degree angle. The smaller hole and tunnel will provide a draft down to the bottom of the fire pit. A Dakota fire pit make a good cooking fire and will not be very visible. If you need to warm several people or need a signal fire, use a regular rock ring fire pit. A Dakota fire pit lets you conserve your energy because it usually takes less work than building a rock fire ring and it will conserve fuel since it is quite efficient as a cooking fire. If your goal is heating an area or a number of people use an open fire pit.
The traditional way to build a fire is from the bottom up. Start with your tinder, then small kindling, then larger kindling, etc and finally add your big logs on top. Here is an article on tinder and kindling. The two most common ways to this are the log cabin and tipi structures. In both of these methods you build a sort of cage of firewood around your tinder. For a log cabin structure, the cage is a square shape by alternating pieces of wood stacked perpendicular to each other around the perimeter, all built around your tinder and kindling. For the tipi form, the "cage" is built in tipi shape, leaning the tops of pieces of wood against each other to form a cone above your tinder pile. Then light the tinder and your fire should slowly grow as it consumes larger pieces of fuel. As it burns, keep adding fuel until it is a big as you want it.
Firestarters can be used as an aid to getting your fire going. You might buy commercial firestarters or make your own. Bascically a firestarter is bundle of combustible materials that is easy to light and will continue burning long enough to get your tinder and kindling to burn.
I saw an interesting alternate way to start a fire in a wood stove on a Youtube by Wranglerstar. It is a top down method. You start by laying your larger pieces of firewood on the bottom, then lay a second layer of medium sized pieces perpendicular to the first, leaving about a 1" air gap between each piece. Note each layer is laid all the way across the fire, not just around the outside like you would with the log cabin method. Then add your kindling and tinder on top, nestle in some fire starters, and top it off with more kindling. Then light the fire starters and you're ready to go. An advantage to this method is that it doesn't need the frequent attention bottom up fires need to add fuel. It is pretty much self feeding as the fire works its way down. Once you set one up like this and light it, you won't need to add fuel for probably at least an hour, depending on how much fuel you start with and how fast it burns. That can be a particularly nice feature if you have other things to attend to, giving you time to take care of them or for your shop to warm up before your fire goes out.
I suggest you give the top down method a try one of these days. It takes a little longer to set up, but not much. And it frees you up from constantly tending the fire to get it going so overall it may actually save some time. That can be really handy if you have other tasks around camp or are just firing up the wood stove out in the shop and have other things to do while it warms up.
No matter how you chose to build your fire you will need tinder and kindling and a source of ignition to get it going. Tinder is very small, dry combustible material like dry grass, wood shavings, or cotton balls. Kindling is small twigs or sticks, usually smaller than the diameter of your little finger. See my post on log splitting for more information about making kindling. Matches and lighters are the most common and convenient sources of ignition, but in a survival situation you may need to know How To Start a Fire Without Matches. Normally you start with a small bundle of tinder which can be easily ignited, then add kindling until the fire is large enough to ignite bigger pieces of fuel.
If you are new to building fires you might want to practice in your backyard before setting out on a camping trip where your skills could be put the test and consequences of failure very inconvenient and unpleasant and maybe embarrassing. Make sure fires are allowed in your jurisdiction. Cooking fires, like BBQs and small campfires, are usually permitted in residential areas, but some places do prohibit open fires (like campfires) in your own backyard.
Speaking of Fire restrictions. In many areas you will encounter more stringent fire restrictions during dry summer months, especially in forested areas. These restrictions are NOT harassment! They are in place because the risk of a forest fire is great. Sometimes you can still have a campfire in a forest service approved fire pit (usually only found in forest service campgrounds) but in extreme fire conditions NO fires will be permitted. Some people think it is OK to have fire after a day or two of rain, but that isn't enough to eliminate the dry condition of the trees so the forest is still a large mass of dry, ready fuel so ALWAYS check the fire condition at the local ranger station or camp host before lighting up! Remember, if you cause a wildfire you can be held liable for the damages, and that can run into many millions of dollars! Last year I was called out with our fire department to put out a brush fire at a local campground. One of the campers had ignored posted fire restrictions and direct personal orders (multiple times!) from the camp ground personnel about having a campfire during the then posted Extreme Fire Danger. Their belligerent refusal to comply resulted in the loss of several acres of forest at the campground and they were fined by the campground and probably faced further charges for damages from the forest agencies in charge of the area
Learn to burn and burn to learn!
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