Ummm... clip don't work guys.

Of course, a match helps.

got it. sorry about that!

i like the lighter fluid bottle next to the wood stack. did that factor in to this roaring blaze?
how's that working out with the fire pit on slate?

I just have to say - that jumping beans clip that shows up on the side made me laugh out loud. Maxwell, you are a nut.

" ... and the end result is a fitting metaphor for the one minute that you just spent listening to me."

- Allie

@rick - lol

Actually, I wanted to use lighter fluid, but Allie stopped me to do his thing and we didn't need it.

I bet Allie's ectatic with that screen-grab.

Wow, it's funny watching urban yuppies try and do things like light fires. The little rings are totally unnecessary: just scrunch some paper up and spray it with cooking oil if you don't have enough kindling.

I think the urban yuppies comment was a little harsh... why waste the cooking oil, when you can just use the paper?

I'm a reasonably accomplished outdoors person, and my husband makes me look like a wus. He can start a fire in a downpour, on a mountainside, in the wilderness, without newspaper, with a torn ankle ligament and his foot swollen up like an Idaho spud.

The rings are cute, but yeah, I have to second Vagary and say the rings don't add value. The way the *dry* wood is stacked is *much* more important. They've got a log cabin set up, or you can use a tee-pee set up. This helps with air flow, not the newspaper rings. Either way, some kind of tinder is useful -- pine needles, paper towels, newspaper, dried cow pies, old underwear -- it's nearly impossible to start logs of that size without a super hot catalyst. In the real world, once you've got embers, you need a bellows to keep it going. That's either lots of blowing 'till your cheeks hurt, or, I bet you'll never EVER guess.... wait for it.... a cowboy hat. Yep. Those hats take all the work out blowing. (yeah yeah, there's a Brokeback mountain joke in there, somewhere). Best back-county bellows, EVER. No, a baseball cap doesn't work.

When we were caught in a downpour on a mountainside in the wilderness, we took shelter in the down-wind side of a grove of trees and lit pine needles to get our first fire going. It was enough to stave off hypothermia. The second, MUCH more robust fire we made hours later, under a decent canopy, took much more effort -- not matter what, you need dry wood. So if you can get a hot bed of coals going, even with small branches, twigs, and pine needles, you can dry out larger branches soon enough and get a real fire going.

We heat with wood (clean burning woodstove) and constantly experiment and one-up each other with our fire-starting skills. It's like fish stories. Must be hard-wired into human nature! This looks like a fun thing to try. One advantage of twisting and rolling the newspaper is likely to be less floating flaming ash. So there may be something to it.

excellent! one minute tips are brilliant...going to try this one. m