Starting a Fire in a Difficult Place

Strike anywhere match to a handful of low grown, barkless, spruce twigs; the absolute thinnest ones. Works in all temps and a sure fire as long as it hasn’t rained.

I have never bothered with feather sticks; that is not to say they dont work well for other people. Whatever will work well however, whenever needed is shaven dry pine or spruce. In wet conditions, find dead standing pine or spruce and shave a bunch of slivers to use as kindle, then use the rest of the log as fuel.

While cooking bone broth in an oven, I have grease spills from the lip that boil over and burn. Rather than wiping it with a rag or throwing it out, I may wipe it with a cotton ball or small cotton rag used later to start a fire; I would not do this with feed lot animal tallows.

A rag, cotton ball, dry cat tail, wasp nesting or any other fine vegetable matter material will light and hold a hot flame longer when it is saturated with oil; this also makes use of oil that you would otherwise discard. 

Birch bark. Lay a few slivers under your tightly crunched and bundled dry spruce twigs in cold wintery conditions. The bark will light and hold a flame until the spruce kindle takes.

The pitch stick. A simple pitch glue recipe on the internet (1prt hot pitch glue with a near equal amount of crushed carbon brick, and some bees wax - mixed - will make a waterproof  fire starter. 

Simply wrap the glue, warm, around a hardy length of clean cotton cord and tie a loop at one end to dangle. The pitch stick may shatter if its cold or not malleable enough and hits something while dangling.

A man was selling a derivation of this item with a match buried along with the other end of the inner cord; the head of the match is just beneath the pitch tip, so the covering could be easily peeled off and the match struck to make a stand alone fire starter.

The tip can be lit and held under a small pile of spruce twigs in place of using petrol in your lighter. A 3 inch stick can light as many as 15 fires or so. Even in a cloud of fog or if the spruce twigs are damp, this quick pitch stick will be reach kindles dry core and start your fire without burdening you too much with matches or eating your lighter petrol.

You can "prime" a fire in cut block forests ("managed" forests) or without birch or dry grass by putting a clump of pitch right on top of your regular kindle sticks. Put your lit match or lit pitch stick under the clump which is sitting on a pile of relatively thick kindle sticks, so the fire rise through the kindle sticks to the pitch clump. The clump will melt the pitch and ignite, drip, spread, and fuel the fire; this method has saved me when I'm unwilling to look for fine kindle, make fine kindle, or my hands were too cold to use the magnesium stick.

Collect clumps of the pitch from trees when a good portion becomes available. If storing your stash in a pouch, throw some ash into the pouch to prevent the clumps of pitch from sticking to the pouch or your hands.

Yet another fire starter to consider is the pitch nest method. Simply take some fresh, still soft pitch, or sap from an appropriate tree (pine or spruce, ect.) and mix, by hand, with wasp or hornet nest paper, though most dry tinder will do (I think), in a 50/50 ratio. Light the ball which needn't be larger than the tip of your thumb, and place under your kindle. The ball will maintain a fire until the kindle is lit.

When the branches are wet from fresh rain, it is hard to start a fire with the pitch stick alone shown above. So, collect large amounts of fresh, dry, sticky state, pitch sap and make a regular fire nest of spruce twigs. Put the large amount of the messy sap on a twig and put the stick at the bottom of the nest, then lite it with a black sap fire starter.