Sven Saw

Half (3/4?) the fun of camping is building a campfire and staring at it zoned out for like 4 hours straight.

To build a campfire, you will need firewood.

If you're at a campsite with shared bathrooms and a concrete fireplace, then you can usually just buy firewood there, or right outside the park.

If you're backcountry camping, then you have to find wood wherever you end up spending night. Supposedly you can usually just run around collecting sticks and pieces of wood already on the ground. However, if you are really in the middle of nowhere and can't find any small pieces of loose wood and need to start a fire and also found a fallen, dried out, already dead tree, then you totally need this SVEN SAW, which is a way cooler and more efficient and smaller-to-carry alternative to the usual hatchet.

SVEN SAW, $30, Amazon

Update: with a 30% off code, you can get the saw at Wood & Metal for $22


How to Start a Fire (as far as I know... tbh, usually I only tend a started fire...):

1. Get paper (newspaper, paper bags) and stick a couple handfuls in the middle of the fireplace/fire area.
2. Scatter some small, dry sticks and twigs on top of or around the paper (like in a teepee form if you want to be fancy).
3. Place some smaller pieces of firewood in a teepee shape around the sticks and paper.
4. Light the paper-- the sticks catch fire, and then the small pieces of wood start to burn.
5. When there's a tiny fire going, and a lot of the smoke from the paper has burned off, add a bigger log or two and wait for it to catch fire.
6. Then, for the next couple of hours just keep adding bigger logs, making sure the logs all get air.

CAMP HACK: if you just grilled dinner, take the hot coals and use them in place of the paper and small sticks to start the fire.

PRO TIP: use cured firewood because it won't smoke.

PRO TIP 2: buy the firewood from the park or close-- it's usually illegal to bring your own from farther away because you can bring weird unwanted insects.