Joe Jansen's Campfire Essentials

Since good campfire building skills training has seemingly all but sputtered out in the 21st Century Wood Badge program, the WB Scribbler feels compelled to blog this list of campfire essentials from Scout-Ler Joe Janson. In this centennial year of "New Scouting," we still believe knowing how to build campfires is basic to a good Scout program. Some basic fires are well known. It is less well known that there are essentially an unlimited number of kinds of fires which have a wide range of purposes.

Here's a link with good information to some campfires:

http://www.paddling.net/guidelines/showArticle.html?191

Covered are the teepee fire, the pyramid or platform fire, the parallel fire, the star or Indian fire, and the reflector fire.

Wikipedia has an excellent article on campfires here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campfire

Still other fires are described here:

http://www.campfiredude.com/campfire-lays.shtml

Image results for "campfire types" will be found here:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&oq=&q=campfire+types&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=qkpqS4yyEsrT8Qbx7aiwBw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CBgQsAQwAw

Videos about building campfires appear here:

www.ehow.com and www.youtube.com

Further information on fire types is available here:

http://www.scoutscan.com/campfire.html#L4

A superb resource for fire types, prepared by our own Rick Seymour, is here:

http://www.inquiry.net/OUTDOOR/skills/b-p/wb/fires.htm

There is also great information on the burning qualities of various kinds of wood.

I will mention that coal, where available, is superb for adding to a wood fire for cooking, as coal has a higher heat content than wood. I start wood fires in my furnace every winter and add a small amount of coal to generate more heat.

A site with good illustrations of fire types is available here:

http://www.angelfire.com/ia3/camping/campfire.htm#typesoffires

Another site with information on fire types is here:

http://camping.lovetoknow.com/Types_of_Campfires

and here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/hjlichtman/Resources/ArtOfCampfire/types_of_campfires.htm

Good tips on Dutch Oven cooking are available here:

http://www.free-camping-recipes.com/dutch-oven-campfire-cooking.html

and here:

http://papadutch.home.comcast.net/~papadutch/dutch-oven-cooking-tips.htm

A very good resource to getting information on campfire building from Scouting related publications is available here:

http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Campfire_Types#Campfire_Types

This barely scratches the surface of what's available. Every Scout patrol should have a deck of cards which reviews the kinds of Scout campfires that will be useful in various situations for easy review. Cards prepared should be coated or laminated so they will hold up in the out of doors. Additionally, they may be put inside a plastic baggy to protect against moisture.

Every real Boy Scout troop will be expert in firebuilding. The links suggested above are a good start to developing this expertise. In addition there are many many other sites on the Internet that provide additional information. Enter "campfire types" in Google and you will see there are thousands of links returned.

--Joe Jansen