How to Chop Wood for a Campfire: Online Guide to Camping & Fire Safety

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is Brian on behalf of expertvillage.com. Now that we have our fire going, it’s important to maintain it. It’s also important to cut enough wood to have the fire burn for as long as you need it to through the night. What I am going to show you is how to properly chop wood for the fire using an axe, how to select sizes of wood for the duration of time you need to have your fire burn, and as well as the species selection. For example, pine tends to burn much more quickly than does oak. This is an example of oak right here. You can see from the leaf structure that came off it and from the type of bark that this is oak. This is a much more dense wood than is pine and it would burn longer. To achieve about an hour worth of the burn time all you need here is approximately 2 feet long and in about 8 inches in diameter, to achieve a 1 hour burn time. With pine, that would only give you about a half hour. But as I begin to cut the wood, notice that I have gloves on to protect my hands as well as eye protection. If you properly cut wood, you do throw chips, so you want to cut your wood away from your campsite so people that are camping with you are not in risk of being hit by a high speed chip. Also, be careful of the direction in which you cut. Again, try to send it away from your campsite rather than towards it. Now as I begin to cut the wood, you’ll see I actually approach the wood at an angle. You never want to chop wood directly on. That’s the least efficient way of doing it. Come at the wood from an angle. Take large swings of the axe over your head to build up a lot of momentum and speed, and strike the wood at an angle so it should begin to form a wedge shape in the wood. Take several swings at an angle of about 45 degrees, and then take 1 swing alternating to cut that wedge out. This way you are working with the grain of the wood. As the axe penetrates and it will actually pull layers of the tree apart and allow you for a more quick and efficient cut. Again, like I said, you want to approach it from a 45 degree angle and then take a straight cut from the top to remove that chip. Form another chip with several more 45 degrees cuts, and another couple of cuts at the opposite angle to release those chips. Let's begin. "