Your ability to start a fire under emergency conditions can save your life! The inability to start a fire can cost it! Here are some common methods, and how well they work!

The ability build a fire under survival conditions may save your life. The inability may cost your life! by Leon Pantenburg I met Peter Kummerfeldt several years ago at the Deschutes County Sportsmans Show, in Redmond, OR after I dropped in during his “Myths of Survival” presentation. With no idea of who this guy was, or [...]

Pitch wood, cedar bark, dry grass, weed stalks, pine needles etc. all work great for firestarting when the weather is nice. But usually, the fouler the weather, the more desperately you need a fire.

You stake your life on your firemaking kit components. My recommendation is to substitute cotton balls in any application you might be using dryer lint.

Some survival items, if the quality is not compromised, should be cheap. This allows you to have multiple pieces of good, effective equipment, stashed in strategic locations, so you’ll never have to run short. This firestarter is a good example!

Making a fire under survival conditions could mean improvising with whatever materials are available. Here’s a fun post that a reader sent in. It demonstrates how to to make the best of available materials if a survival situation happens in a box store at the mall! Currently Sean Jacox (Senior Patrol Leader of Boy Scout [...]

Murphy’s Law, as it relates to survival making, states that the more desperately you need a fire, the harder it will be to start!

The best firestarting system can also be the cheapest and the materials are the easy to find at any drug or grocery store.

Catching a spark and blowing it into a flame is a skill that can save your life. Charcloth is a material that has been “cooked” like charcoal is at high temperatures until it becomes black. Properly-made charcloth will easily catch a spark and grow into an ember. This ember can be transferred to a tinder bundle and blown into a flame.

Maybe the best thing about charcloth is that you make it yourself, and the materials are free. It belongs in every survival kit