How do you light your fire?

[Calaf]

What are the best ways to get a fire going in the oven? How to stack the wood, types of wood, igniters etc.

At the risk of asking a silly question... but I ask because despite having owned various barbies and a chiminea I've never acquired the knack of starting a fire without resorting to the bellows or firelighters. I usually end up making 2 or 3 attempts and choking myself before it's underway.

I shall try Happy Baker's smokefree method.

[veauifru]

Calaf, the method I use for my chimnea is like this... see no reason it would be different for an oven...

Take two logs about 12 inches long. If one is thicker than the other, place that one on the floor, and place the second over it with one end on the floor in a sort of crooked T. (Hope that makes sense.)

Now place some thin kindling under the gap at light it. Feed it with a few more thicker twigs and when that is going add still thicker twigs and build up like that until the large logs have caught.

Newspapers just make a mess. Thin dry softwood twigs produce a more steady flame.

rgds
Tom

[turkey]

I believe the best start to an easy to light fire, that is as smoke free as possible is to use build upside down fire, this is where you have logs at the bottom and layer upwards through smaller wood to kindling, this means as it burns is slowly falls down due to gravity igniting each layer as it goes. The heat will make the un ignighted wood give off gas, usually this is ontop of the fire and these gasses leave as smoke, when upside down the gasses pass through the fire and are combusted and after a short while should be completely combusted leaving no carbon left so no black smoke.

A picture would be good, but here is a video which is probably better as its more specific to our use



Some people have said using a heat gun on the initial fire also helps, there was some debate on this as I believe a heatgun is overkill and just a fan to increase the oxygen to the fire should be enough, and the heat gun is just using electricity for the sake of it.

[webbaldo]

I cheat and use a weed burner/weed wand. Just stack the hardwood inside and leave the burner directly on it for about 3-5min.

[Fat Bob]

In the summer collect fallen branches (or use every bit of the tree when chopping it down). When trimming vines keep the pieces they are highly valued for fire lighting.

We hand break off every last twig on a branch and put them in sacks to dry. A couple of pieces of junk mail a large handful of twigs and some small pices of chopped wood. Fire will be blazing in minutes.

Have never experience problems starting a fire.

[turkey]

if we are talking general tips to get the first part to light a fire rather than fire design I suppose there are a few tips I can think of.

first is don't use paper, whilst it can be used it tends to burn quickly with little heat and actually insulates the rest of the file with its layer of ash.

kindling is the part you light, this needs in general to be dry and as high a surface area as possible, so think lots of thin sticks or a mesh like dried grass or a dry moss or my current fab is wood shavings, I use a plane and shave kindling from my logs rather than buy kindling and just chop logs smaller to help feed the fire prior to cold or logs going on. The wood shavings light easily but do burn very well and give off a lot of heat so they can light fairly large chunks of wood and unlike wood seem to leave some embers which keep heat in the fire and help it all along.

then to feed that initial flame you need some wood in growing sizes, depending on the fire size depends on how many sizes you pile on, if you find the fire is going out I would say use more smaller and bits and for BBQ's and chimeas being outside I would try to protect from the wind until it has taken.

softwood takes much easier than hard in most cases so can be thicker quicker, and like Bob says often garden waste will burn well, dried scramble goes up like a rocket.

I believe you can make some cheap fire lighting material with cottonwool doused in vasaline, cheap and should burn very well.

[Calaf]

Thanks chaps.

Nothing wrong with "cheating" webbaldo! I have a couple of plumbing torches but you couldn't leave one there without your weed-wand approach. Good idea.

Turkey, that is interesting stuff. Those two rednecks were kinda funny (I wonder if they are from Gary Indiana). I'll give the upside-down method a go. And Tom's T method.

Bob, last year I took down a Beech in my garden (another coming down this year) so I have lots of wood to season. I usually chip the small stuff but was too lazy so have a pile of twigs and small branches. Still a bit soft right now. What I do have is a bin full of bone-dry Buddleia twigs and branches. Quite a hard wood so thinking good for heat.

Problem is I would make a rubbish arsonist.

[scottme]

Another vote for the weed wand approach to lighting from me.

As far as building the fire goes, I've tried with small stuff on the bottom and on the top, and I don't find it makes much difference.

I believe the key thing is to have a range of sizes of material, so the fire catches hold on the small stuff (twigs, thin bits of kindling <10mm cross section), then spreads to gradually larger stuff and so gets properly established. I tend not to use anything with a cross-section more than 75mm, unless I plan to be leaving the fire unattended for a length of time.

[surfingspider]

I also really like the upside down fire method. Build it light it walk away! (but not to far obviously). It just looks after itself. No stinking of smoke because by the time your have to do anything the smoke has gone. I do it a little differently to the video posted earlier. I do it more like this video below.



It can my oven ready for pizza in about 1 1/2 hours. I think a really good trick is to chuck some seasoned logs in your oven before it has completely cooled after being cooked with, in effect kiln drying the logs for the next time you light your oven. They go up very easily after that. I also find I shouldn't use all kiln dried logs as it burns to fast. I throw some regular seasoned logs on for a bit of sustained heat after the upside down fire has started to stop being an inferno. Also don't put to much wood on to start. it will choke the fire if you literally fill the oven with wood. If i put logs at the back of the oven when I start it like suggested in the video it doesn't work as well for me. people with larger ovens will probably have more success. use normal paraffin style fire lighters sat on an off cut of floor board to start it. I figured the fire gets so hot and chance of the paraffin getting in the food is long gone. I just light them with a long necked lighter like you light you get in the supermarket.

[Calaf]

Hi spider, interesting video.

I had the same experience as you trying to put extra wood at the back. My roof is very low and it overloaded and choked.

Your tip of throwing in some wood to kiln dry it is double excellent.

[DuncanM]

I like to use Flamers: www.certainlywood.co.uk/flamers

They are a natural firelighter - un-treated wood shavings and wax only which means they are odourless - perfect for a WFO. As much as I love the smell of parafin / petroleum burning I wouldn't want that smell imparting into the masonry of my oven at all.

I create a fire by stacking extremely thin pieces of seasoned softwood in a alternateing layer with the flamers in the middle. I'll upload photos I have at home later on.

[DuncanM]

A bit later than promised but here is my method.

Using very dry softwood, cut into small pieces (the smaller the better), stack them up as shown near the front of the oven. I've used 3 stacks here but you can use just 1 or 2.


Fill the gaps with newspaper or some other instant light material (I know use Flamers as mentioned above instead of newspapers - they are great).


Light each one.


Fire takes hold very quickly - as the softwood catches in no time at all.



Slowly add pieces of wood to the fire - starting with pieces of slightly larger softwood, then moving onto small pieces of hardwood, moving onto the larger pieces after an hour or so. Gradually move the fire to the back of the oven - I do two seperate moves, the first after 25-30 minutes once a good ember bed has been created, moving the fire to about halfway back - then after an hour move it to the back wall. Note this is for my BVO which is probably a lot deeper (44") than some Pompeii style ovens - you may be able to get away with only moving it once if yours is smaller.




Don't be tempted to suffocate your fire by overloading it with logs. If you do so the heat will drop for 5-10 minutes and end up creating lots of smoke.

[benjibong]

Really useful info thanks DuncanM

[minesamojito]

I build a teepee in the middle of my oven, paper and a little cardboard at the bottom, then some kindling, and a couple of longer thin logs, and just build up steadily as things warm up, always works a treat for me.
Cheers
Marcus

[Sherlock]

For what its worth.................

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HugX_b_HP6g

brill - works every time !!!

S