DIY Self Feeding Fire – 14+ Hour Fire!
You may have seen pictures on social media or videos on Facebook showing various ways of building a self-feeding campfire. Some people say to build a reverse fire (wood piled largest to smallest), others swear by a horizontal log fire (where you split a long log in half and then build your tinder fire inside the spaced-apart halves of the log). Off all of the schemes we’ve seen, this one seems the most efficient.
This instructional video demonstrates a technique for building a fire structure that will burn continuously and does not require ANY managing. This is a great method to know if you need the heat from a fire while you are sleeping, but do not want to wake up repeatedly during the night to add more wood.
There’s obviously a lot of set-up involved. In the video, Bob stresses that the angle of the feed rails needs to be just right, the logs need to be very straight, spaced properly, and it’s important how you light the tinder fire. While you can tell he certainly has created the ideal conditions, he gets an over 14 hour burn out of his fire, including weathering a downpour of an 1-1/4″, six hours in.
It may seem like a lot of work (and a lot of wood), but anyone who’s ever been camping in cold weather and tending a night fire, knows you don’t get a lot of sleep, and it’s a lot of work throughout the night. I guess a self-feeding fire is just front-loading that work.
I’m not sure how many people are actually going to build this type of fire under a normal outdoor/camping situation, but the demonstration is interesting and it’s nice to know that you could construct such a fire if a situation were to call for one.
