HOW TO SET A FIRE
I know setting the fire is not something everyone does these
days, many people never set one during their whole lifetime. But when my
grandmother, Eva, was born in 1888 everyone cooked over a wood fire, baked their bread, boiled water, heated their
house, bathed children, dried hair and clothes before an open
fire. During her lifetime (until 1966)
she used wood and coal fire stoves, oil, gas and eventually electricity. She actually preferred a gas stove but
mastered them all.
My Dad taught me how to set a
fire when I was very young. Later on that knowledge was refreshed by instructions in a cowboy
movie and though I survived over 40 years not having to set a fire, when the
time came again it was like falling off a bike – sadly I’ve never been very
good a riding bikes, I'm much better at fire setting.
The science of setting a fire is to get the flames under the
wood. If you throw in a log with a few bits of newspaper on top you won’t get a good fire.
The instructions below explain how I set a fire in a steel
firebox but would work in almost any fireplace.
You will need;
TINDER – dry fire starting material like newspaper, old
phone books, dry grass/hay, dead leaves, dry tree bark, and twigs.
KINDLING – sticks, smaller than your thumb and some cardboard or heavy paper.
WOOD – sticks bigger than your thumb or larger pieces
split open.
LOGS – dry wood from bigger than you thumb up to the any size you can fit into your fire space.
TOOLS – a small shovel, brush and tin bucket to clean out
ash, a poker to move burning wood if necessary, heavy gloves for handling
splintery or burning wood, a fire lighter or matches.
SAFETY – make sure the chimney is cleaned at the beginning
of winter.
Check your firebox for
cracks, rust and crumbling fire bricks.
Make sure other wood and extra paper is in a container at least a metre from
the fire site, you don’t need two fires.
Keep clothing or damp washing and towels ‘a metre from the heater' – as recommended
by our fire service officers.
1 – Open the flue.
2 – Clean the glass
door, if you are using a firebox. Clean out the old ash. A new
fire will burn onthe fire in a pan. If
lighting a fire outside you could dig a shallow hole, as a pan, and surround it with rocks,
in an open fireplace a single line of bricks across the front holds the fire and in
a steel fire box, like we have in our house, there is usually a shallow pan
shape formed by fireproof bricks inside.top of old ash, and a shallow layer is good, but I like to have
3 – Lay a base of
cardboard or thick paper (not glossy) or thin bark. Save cardboard boxes from cereal, crackers
etc. A cereal box flattened makes a good base as do cardboard egg
cartons, non-glossy magazines, old bank statements, bills, advertising
brochures and other junk mail. Paper
will do if nothing else but cardboard, or heavy paper, burns slower. Junk mail and envelopes inside a large used envelope or paper bag makes a good base for a fire, but not too thick.
4 – Put kindling
on top of the base - scrunched
up newspaper and parcels of dry leaves, very small sticks and twigs wrapped
in newspaper. Use twisted newspaper to
make a ‘wick’ from front to back of the fire box, so that when you light it
later it will burn into the middle of the space.
5 – Lay small sticks
across the top of the kindling in a criss-cross pattern to allow air movement
between the pieces. Air is fuel for the fire.
The fire box should be about half full.
6 – Now we are up to the real wood. Select some sticks
bigger than your thumb but not as big around as your arm. Lay two or three of these bigger sticks across the top of the pile of the smaller sticks and stand
about 8 or 10 more in front of the fire, leaning back on top of the kindling
pile i making sure your newspaper ‘wicks’ poke through to the front. Ir this
was a camp fire the standing sticks would be in tepee form around the kindling.
So now the fire is ‘set’ and ready to go.
Light the fire by
touching your lighter to the four wicks and stand back, or close the door if
you have a glass door firebox. You
should see the fire burning through the paper underneath the bigger wood.
As
the kindling burns the pile will collapse and you can add more of the larger
sticks and finally the logs. From here on you need some intuition as every fire is different.
If you get a lot of black smoke try opening the door a little. A little cool air going into the fire box
helps to draw the smoke up the chimney.
Close the flue half way when the fire is burning well.
When the large sticks are glowing you can add bigger and bigger
logs. The fire will eventually become glowing logs with a few flames and you
will feel the heat radiating from the firebox.
Close the flue all the way and add logs as needed.
