[Stoves] Accidental TLUD technique discovery

[neiltm at uwclub.net]

Crispin, I'm amazed by your scouting campfire experience, it bears 
absolutely no relation to mine, where in both the troops I was in at 
different times the fires whether for cooking or the sing song camp 
evening fire were completely conventional bottom lit, the latter 
sometimes in a tepee construction.  What you are describing, but probably 
on a larger scale, seems to be what Paal Wendelbo described and that 
inspired him.  It might be interesting to try to discover if old scouting 
literature describes making fires this way.  Our cooking was in large 
oval cast iron 'dixies' placed on top of sticks aligned in the direction 
of the wind hopefully.  The most sophisticated thing we did was to roast 
large joints of pork, from breakfast time to be ready at lunch time where 
a roasting tin with the joint was placed on a bed of embers, a galvanised 
bath tub inverted over the whole and sealed with ash and a fire from a 
separate pit brought over and placed around the windward side and on top. 
 Guaging the degree of cooking was by removing a pole from the corner of 
the cook house shelter, placing the metal tip on the top of the bathtub 
and the wooden end in an ear!  After 4 years of observing and helping in 
this process you became sufficiently competent to take charge of it.  We 
were allowed half an hour leeway to bring the pork to the table, pork 
properly cooked was more important than punctuality!

So was the TLUD/CD fire common knowledge in Britain/Europe?  I never came 
across it in the late 50s and sixties, or since.  Our scoutmaster was an 
ex navy man, perhaps if he had been army?  There's some unwritten history 
here surely?

But I came across this through the second hit on a search for 'scout camp 
fire instructions':

https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/campfire-basics.html

They call it the 'Upside down (pyramid)' (the fire being 'upside down', 
not the pyramid!

The girl guides also have it, but they don't really understand it, unless 
yours had tinder at the bottom as well?:

http://gscm.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/07-1137MasterOfTheCampfire.pdf

"You can use several types of fire styl
es for a campfire. The PYRAMID starts
with a bottom layer of 4-6 inch diameter
logs. Add subsequent layers of smaller
shorter logs. Fill the center with tinder
and kindling and light the fire on a small
platform of sticks near the top. As it
burns, the coals fall in to the middle,
helping the fire burn downward."

wikihow.com don't know it

http://scoutingmagazine.org/2016/02/how-to-build-the-best-campfire/

don't list it

It seems patchy, but I'm wondering if it simply became largely forgotten 
in my day and has been revived a bit in more recent times?  It always 
amazes me what my parents generation didn't seem to know.

Best wishes,   Neil Taylor


On 15 Nov 2016 at 20:15, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:

> Dear Neil
> 
> "why doesn't everyone do it that way?!"
> 
> 
> Then I was a Boy Scout we used to have large meetings in the evening
> Zaround a large campfire. It was a stack as you describe with 6-8" logs at
> the bottom and kindling at the top. It looked like an Egyptian pyramid. It
> was always top lit so it didn't make smoke and bother whoever was
> downwind.
> 
> The wood was gathered from what was available which meant the large pieces
> in particular would be damp. They were dried from above. As time passed
> the fire (char) fell to the centre. This caused the in-drafting air to
> pass through the dampish wood and run into the char fire, whatever the
> height at the time. It would remain quite clean burning to the last straw,
> so to speak.
> 
> In that condition it could be viewed as a crossdraft fire with the
> pyrolysis gases being consumed in the char/coke fire in the centre that
> also provided the draft.
> 
> The technique also contained the fire as the largest logs would take ages
> to burn through. As I recall this type of bonfire was standard practice in
> the Scouting world for generations.