Steps and ways to build a fire

 Starting a fire without matches can be a useful survival skill to have. Before you start a fire, you always make sure it is in a safe spot. If you are starting a fire on the open ground, you want to make sure you have something to prevent the fire from burning things you don’t want burned. You either want to start a fire in a firepit, or at least enclose your fire with a ring of stones, or some other barrier to prevent it from escaping.

Before you begin though, you want to make sure you have both tiny, small and then some larger logs to burn.

From there, you will need to gather kindling and create a tinder bed. Here are a few ways to make a tinder bed; 

• Bird's Nest Method: Gather dry grass, leaves, or thin twigs and arrange them in a loose, nest-like shape. 
• Feather Stick Method: Use a knife to create feather sticks by shaving thin strips of dry wood      along a stick. Place the feather sticks in a crisscross pattern to create a bed of highly flammable material. 
• Char Cloth Method: Char cloth is cotton fabric that has been charred in a tin. 
• Cattail Fluff Method: Gather the fluffy seed heads of cattails and fluff them up to create a light, airy tinder bed. Cattail fluff catches fire easily and burns quickly, making it an excellent tinder material for starting a fire in the wild.

Once you have your tinder bed, you need to get a spark to it. If you had a Firestarter, it would be easy to ignite, but there are a few other methods to create a spark that will ignite your tinder bed.

• Friction-Based Methods: One of the most common friction-based methods is using a bow      drill or hand drill. This involves creating friction between two pieces of      wood to generate heat and eventually create an ember that can be used to      start a fire.
• Flint and Steel: Using a flint or a piece of quartz along with a steel striker can create      sparks when struck together. These sparks can ignite a tinder bundle, such      as dry grass or cloth, which can then be used to start a fire.
• Solar Power: Harnessing the power of the sun by using a magnifying glass, eyeglasses,      or even a soda can bottom to focus sunlight onto a small pile of tinder      can create enough heat to start a fire.
• Fire Plough: Another method involves using a fire plough, which consists of a stick that is      dragged along a groove in a piece of wood to create friction and generate      heat to ignite a fire. 
• Battery and steel wool: You can press a 9v battery to a wad of steel wool, and this will      start a reaction, igniting the steel wool. 

Once you have the tinder bed lit, start adding smaller sticks, leaves, or other small flammable things to it, and as the fire grows, keep adding progressively larger sticks and then logs.