Here I go, playing with fire again! This is something I saw Ray Mears demonstrate in his Bushcraft video series. It is a neat concept that requires a dry and seasoned log. In the Bushcraft episode, Ray uses pine. I didn’t have pine available but I did have some knotty spruce from a tree that was felled from the yard this spring. It wasn’t as seasoned as well as it should have been, making it more difficult to ignite, but once it got started it burned nicely. I used a chainsaw to make the cuts. In the video, Ray explained that the cuts could also be made with a hand saw or the log could be split into quarters and the ends buried in the ground vertically. The splitting method seems easiest of the two alternatives and when I do this again, I’ll try it that way for comparison. One mistake I made was packing the cuts way too tightly with sticks which impeded the oxygen flow thus adding further difficulty to the ignition process. As you can see by the photos, the wind was wreaking havoc on the distribution of heat and flame. Even with the wind conditions as they were, I was able to get the uncovered pot to a boil, but not to a rapid, rolling boil. I suspect that under more ideal circumstances (i.e., no wind, properly seasoned wood, and perhaps a lid for the pot) the water would have reached a rolling boil. We’ll have to see what happens the next time I try the Fire Log out.
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Looks like a lot of work,when a camp fire would be easier and more efficient..
A lot of work, yes. But it has some advantages that a campfire does not have. For example, the fire log won’t melt into deep snow, the flat cut on the top of the log provides a level surface for cooking pots and pans and the unit as a whole is moveable (if done with extreme caution). These features may not always be necessary, but they could be considered practical under certain situations.