Never start a fire with damp wood if you can help it, not only is it harder to start but its horrible, way too much smoke.
I've only gone camping once before! And it was in a large group. Other people took care of the fire and things. Honestly I'd be a little nervous about starting a fire outside because I've never done it before (smokey the bear says you don't want to set your backyard on fire!), although I supposedly know about it in theory and have watched a few youtube videos.....
Haha.. It actually looks interesting.. I usually do heavier subjects so this would just be cause I love gathering information like herbs iin the the woods.. . ..sourcing nuffians though is a bit sketchy only one Indian girl I know uses her real name.. You might like an old book called The Whole Earth Catalog published I think 1970..
to process firewood. chop down those dead or dying trees.(not those rotting and ready to fall ones) then dice them to manageable sizes.(cut to blocks and then to sticks with 1-2 ft length and 4-10 cm width) then you just dry them everyday.(you also have to shelter them before it's dusk, and dry them when there's already no fog in the morning) don't chop vibrant and green trees, they take too much time to dry..(about 1-2 months at least)
I dont know how to answer your question, all I did is follow my insting guide me and desire to burn some normies
I build bon fires in my backyard every now and then, and the trick to starting it is gas....lots of gas.....or some old newspaper...... but gas is more fun.
1: Partially dependant on wind. That's why blacksmiths use bellows. It can rapidly make a fire hotter but under normal circumstances? 300 degrees Celsius for combustion. 600 at peak. 2: Not so simple.You need tinder, kindling and fuel wood. Tinder (basically twigs) burns fastest. Then kindling, then fuel. Rule is to make a circle with your hands and fill with twigs. That is the amount of tinder you need to start the fire. Kindling is forearm length, thumb width, and you need about as much as you can fit if you make a circle with your arms. Fuel wood needs to be wrist thick logs piled to knee height. 3. It will last about 3-5 hours. But if you add more fuel regularly you can keep it going. It would be highly unlikely to last the night without any extra fuel. 4. Different. You're talking fireplace, not campfire. The rule is that if there is no insulation divide the cubic measurement of the room in metres by 10. That is how many kilowatts you need to heat it. The kilowatts you get from the fire vary depending on wood. Wood pellets give around 5 kilowatts per metre squared of wood. So your log cabin (assuming 25 ft width) needs around 7 kilowatts to heat which is about a metre and a half cubed of wood pellets.
Having a pit (clear the spot so no leaves or stuff around that could possible catch on fire) with rocks surrounding it would be a good idea. Just remember to have a bucket of water or a pile of sand/soil near by when you try
Then You don't have to be afraid of anything, if You have the knowledge You just need to apply it. Just start on the beginner stuff first and do it in real life, that way You'll learn something and get an actual experience.
Then do you schedule the campfire for the following night? I might be done with the calculations by then haha
Seriously that encyclopedia is a cool idea..you should promote it like they do NUF Matchmaking.. I wouldnt have noticed it if you didnt post it in your reply so you get more contributers..
In a primitive scenario, right after your immediate survival is met, your next task is to build a shelter. Assuming it's more a permanent design, incorporating a rocket mass heater is a good idea - note that natural stone can be used in place of the rocket chimney - though prefer metamorphic and avoid sedimentary rocks, as they tends to adsorb water easily, and thus may crack, shatter, or explode under high temps. This will save you a LOT of firewood (between 1/5th to 1/10th!!), and allows you to use just about any burnable material, without needing to care as much about soft-vs-hard woods, or poisonous bark, or such. Note that if you have a good, flat capstone, you also then have a ready-made primitive cooking surface. Another advantage of a rocket mass heater, is that you can also use it to produce a small amount of charcoal, simply by loosely placing wood scraps in the outer cylinder, as long as you make sure that the airflow is not interrupted too much. It's not very efficient, and the woodgas is potentially dangerous, but you're talking about primitive conditions, without the EPA ready to haul you off to jail. Still, his would probably be enough for a small bloomery, and a foot-powered iron forge for knives, arrowheads, and small tools. Even without all that effort, if it's just for cooking, a regular rocket stove can be made simply by digging a trench; they are also called dakota fire holes. They are high-temp for smaller amounts of fuel then an ordinary firepit, which eliminates much of the concern regarding wood type and wet woods.
1. You build a campfire. How hot does it burn (what temperature)? How much does the heat decay depending on how far you stand away from the campfire? Depends on the temperature around you. If it's in the summer, it's really quite hot, but you probably won't feel the heat much since you'd be accustomed to summer. In the winter, the heat provided is the same, but you feel it more because your body's accustomed to the cold. I'd say more than 7 feet is certainly far enough that you start getting diminishing heat. 2. How much firewood do you need for a campfire... let's say to do cooking? How long does it burn? Depends on what kind of firewood you're using. Soft wood burns faster and outputs less ass. Hard wood burns slower, but they're also harder to set on fire. Soft wood burns faster for the same volume of material, so it's good for starting a cooking fire. Hard wood is what you use when you want to output a sustainable heat for long periods. Please take note that although it's called soft wood, it's still hard, so don't split it with your bear hands. I don't know how long exactly each type last as I never calculated. I only know that if I put a softwood twice the size of my hand, it will burn out completely in less than an hour. if it's hardwood twice the size of my hand, it can likely last for a quarter of the night, but I don't usually put just one log, and I never actually measured the time, so it probably can go longer. 3. If you add more firewood, how much hotter/bigger does the fire burn? Like if you add twice the firewood, does it burn twice as big or twice as long? It would be best if there's a formula of some kind! It's hard to say. It's not like the fire burns bright the moment you throw in more firewood, this isn't a metal foundry. The firewood needs to heat up first, to have its water content dried first before it can start to burn. It's hard to give a formula because different kinds of wood burns differently. Softwood burns fastest but gets consumed quickly. Then again, there are different kinds of soft woof and each burns differently. For bonfires, you want hard wood. 4. How much firewood do you need to heat a log cabin of 100 sqft and 8 ft tall using a fireplace? Formula~!!!! For how long? An entire night? 6 oak logs twice the width of my arms should be able to last for the whole night. 5. How heavy is firewood? Quite heavy. However, it's not so heavy that a child can't lift it. Take note that hardwood logs are heavier than softwood logs, but not by much. 6. What was the typical per capita consumption of firewood in history (e.g. middle ages, colonial period... the more data points the better!). I imagine the numbers were probably different over the winter vs. summer. How much did people typically store? Most colonial era homes in America needs at least 40 cords of wood to last the year. Below is a picture of 5 cords of wood. You need 8 times the amount for the whole year. https://chrisstevensonauthor.com/2016/01/24/how-much-firewood-did-colonial-americans-use/ 7. About how many acres/hectacres of woodland would be necessary to produce sufficient firewood in steady-state quantities to sustain a typical village? I mean, if it's a big forest, obviously there's plenty, but how far in radius would a woodcutter typically need to travel from the village? Note: See coppicing, probably requires a prerequisite understanding of forestry (haven't gotten there on the tech tree yet ) A partial answer was given in the link above. 8. How long does it take to gather firewood? Go in into the woods and search! How long does it take to gather X amount of a firewood in a well-managed woodland? What about in a wild forest? What about it an urban/settled area? You don't need to search for firewood in the forest. There's wood everywhere. If you're only using the broken branches on the forest ground, then yes, it would take probably 10 minutes. If you're going to cut wood, you'd want to find some hardwood trees that are manageable for you and your men to cut and carry home. Take note that when you cut a tree, you will also have to cut the branches off it before you can transport it home. 9. How do you season freshly cut firewood? And for how long? And how is it typically stored? Season? No, we just leave them under a roof in an open space for 4 years tops. Beyond that, you'd probably start getting mushrooms. 10. How long does it take to split firewood? For a strong man, a couple of seconds. For a weakling, a whole day. 11. At what point is wood bad enough that you can't use it? E.g. rotten wood? When it's covered in mold. You don't want to breath in those shrooms. Rotten wood burns better than non-rotten wood, but they also burns out faster, so they're not good for heat. 12. What is the most efficient way to carry a large quantity of firewood? 1) Carry one or several of thin long sticks on your shoulders and split them at home. 2) Push the log into the river and let the river's current carries it downriver. 3) Cut them into smaller pieces, tie them up in a bundle and carry them as if you're wearing a backpack. 13. How much did firewood cost in various historical periods (e.g. medieval UK, Rome, China)? It depends a lot on the region and Ai-chan doesn't have the time to research it. 14. How wet can firewood be before it's impossible to start a fire with it? A soaking wet firewood can't start a fire no matter what. What we normally do when everything is soggy, is to hang a small piece of firewood so that the water drips on the ground and the air helps dry it up. As long as the wood still has 20% moisture, fire will not start. So you need to first reduce the water amount in the wood. Once it's sufficiently dry, you can slowly get it to burn, the fire will remove more water from itself. You put other similarly dry firewood next to it so that the fire will also dry them up. This takes a long time, though, that's why modern campers prefer either gas stove or commercial briquets. 15. If the swedish fire log was so effective, what are the downsides of this method and why wasn't this method more widespread? Ai-chan doesn't carry axes when Ai-chan goes camping. So this method is unusable. Plus, in some forests, a camper isn't allowed to cut down trees. This method assumes that you can cut down trees. 16. How big can a log be (in diameter) before it's ineffective to use as firewood? It doesn't matter how big a log is. The only reason we cut it into smaller pieces is either because larger pieces can't fit in our fireplace or because carrying it is a pain in the ass.
Hi hi! Do you have a link where I can read more about this? I'm assuming this is with a modern wood stove right? I'd be too embarrassed for that! Though really, I was surprised by the number of replies this thread got. I thought nuffians were lazy! I always thought nuffians would be too lazy for this kind of thing. That's a lot of cool stuff! I will save it for when I get to the "Wood Stove" topic on the tech tree. It really makes you appreciate how complicated a stove can be. Apparently even the shape of a stove/fireplace can affect its efficiency! Thanks for the dakota fire hole too! @Ai chan this is purrfect!!!!!!!!! Do you want nuffies? I'm really really impressed! I had no idea that @Ai chan knew so much about this topic!
So many questions... o.0 Well, going from the experience I had on my grandpa's home, you usually put some straw and a few sticks together with the wood to make it burn... You can honestly put the wood together in any shape you want, but you can make the heat spread further if you put it in a pyramid-like shape than if you just put them all together randomly... I don't have any idea if this makes the fire last less or more though, because putting it as a pyramid was way too much of a hassle, so we did it only once... I think that fire lasted less than normal though. (was a lot prettier btw!) As for how long can a fire last... Honestly, it varies way too much, I once made a small pile of straw that lasted for quite some time (sorry, I was a child, I have no idea how much time that was, it felt like over an hour, but it might have been less than half an hour), and I never discovered how it lasted so much, since it usually lasted only a few minutes. I can't say much on the process of lightning it up, since we just used a bit of paper, alcohol and a match, so it was easy peasy to start any fire. I'm glad you got a much much better reply from our goddess though! ^^)/
Well, Ai-chan used to camp a lot in my youth. Ai-chan was part of the girls scouts. Although we didn't really do the rough stuff that boys did, we still learned some stuff. When Ai-chan went to college, Ai-chan joined the local mountain climbing groups. Anyhow, please take note that for point 2, Ai-chan really mean to use softwood as a method of starting fire, not a method of sustaining fire, though you can use it for that purpose too if your hardwood is slow in catching fire. What Ai-chan means is using it as a kindling and fire starter. Softwood burns easily, but it also burns quickly. Probably has something to do with their density. It's also the reason why hardwood is preferable to be turned into coal. If you use hardwood for overnight heating, there would usually be leftover coals or embers that allows you to make fire quickly in the morning. With softwood, there will be no leftover coal or ember. It just turns into very fine dust. Also, do not forget, that if you're starting a fire from friction of two wood, you have to get both hard word and soft wood. Soft wood is the base, hard wood is the stick that you spin on the soft wood base. You want the soft wood base to give out and become dust, not the hard wood stick between your hands. Anyhow, if you are making a story about a guy starting over in a forest, you'd probably want to watch out for this guy. Watch this guy, just this guy, there are others copying his title, style and format to piggyback on his video's popularity. He's made a lot of videos of him creative his own living space using nothing but the tools nature provided him
I'm not much more knowledgeable about firewood than other people in this chat, so I just summarize some of the main points based on my own experience while adding in some tangentially related information from my areas of expertise. To start with, you're going to have different needs depending on how, where, and why you're trying to make a fire. The thing to keep in mind, though, as many other people have said, is that you're almost certainly going to want to use dry wood. What this means in practical terms is that you're going to have to let firewood dry out for a period of months unless you've found a long-dead tree. Thus, if you're out in the wilderness, chopping down a tree to make a campfire isn't a great idea, unless you're planning to stack the wood and leave it there in preparation to come back at a much later date. Certain types of bark are especially good kindling; the one that comes to mind for me is birch bark. However, if you cut it off the tree, if you're not planning to chop it down for wood, you shouldn't cut in a ring around the tree or the tree will probably die. As for tangential information: Modern fireplaces are actually pretty much decorative. Having a shallower fireplace can improve heating to the room, however, given that medieval homes weren't air-sealed and were fairly poorly insulated, you'd might want a fire pit located near the center of the home with a hole/flue above it if you've got a larger space to heat up. If you do have a chimney, you may have a buildup of creosote along the inside of the flue after a long period of use. Creosote itself is very flammable, presenting a fire hazard if it isn't cleaned, but it could be used as a rudimentary accelerant after cleaning it out if you're trying to start a fire in unfavorable conditions. Famously, ash can be used to make soap, however, a much more direct way of using it is to mix with compost/manure to make a rudimentary fertilizer.