Heh. Everybody has their own method. And I'm sure it all works for them. There is no real "trick" to making fire other than practice. Unless you want to get into things like dosing the logs with kerosene before lighting them, but that's cheating and not sane for inside fires anyway.

I'll offer a more theoretical summary of fire instead.

Fire of the household sort is oxidation. Heat causes the complex molecules of the wood (mostly glucose and carbon) to break down and combine in new ways in the presence of oxygen, mainly oxygen from the air. The simple new molecules that are made have less energy in their bonds than the very complicated organic molecules in the wood, and this excess energy is given off as heat. As long as there is enough heat to continue to cause the fuel to break down, the fire will continue to burn or grow.

Fire, then, requires three things which MUST be present: fuel, heat, and oxygen. This is called the "fire tripod". Take away any leg of it, and the fire dies or won't start at all. Heat and oxygen gives you hot oxygen; fuel and oxygen gives you a boring stick doing nothing; fuel and heat gives you nasty smoke. If you are having trouble with your fire, troubleshoot each part separately. If each part is in order, fire should be easy.

Heat is easy enough to get in small amounts with a match or a lighter, or as Andy suggested a firesteel (ferrocerium rod). The amount of heat you need to ignite a given piece of fuel is based on how big it is. Anybody who's tried knows that it's easier to light a piece of paper or a handful of dry grass than it is to light a piece of cordwood. But why? Because in a large piece of fuel, heat is being conducted away from the point you're adding it and being lost over all the surface area that isn't being heated. You can get a piece of cordwood to spontaneously burst into flame, but it takes a massive amount of heat. Paper and grass on the other hand ignite very easily because they are thin and there is nowhere for the heat you're adding to "escape" too.

Fuel must be dry. The drier the better. Water robs your fire of much heat because it turns to steam without adding to the continuing oxidation (fresh wood is also hazardous because pieces of wood can pop apart, sometimes violently, as the water boils inside). Wood takes roughly one year per inch of depth to fully dry to ambient humidity. So a piece of wood that is two inches thick will dry in one year (one inch depth from any face), while a piece of wood that is two inches thick will take two years to fully dry. The loss of moisture is a nonlinear function, and more moisture will be lost in the early stages than in the later stages, hence, you're usually okay burning cordwood after only one year of drying. But it is very difficult to maintain a fire if you are using wood that is only a few months off the stump. The density of the wood will also play a factor here, as the entire piece of wood must be heated to near its ignition temperature before fire can self-sustain itself. Woods like pine, cedar, poplar, and hemlock are light-weight and will ignite easily, while woods like maple, oak, beech, and birch have much more energy content because of their mass but will be harder to ignite.

Finally, oxygen. Your fire needs a lot of it. Most newer homes are so tightly sealed up that you may even need to add an air intake for the fireplace to work properly. If your new house had a fireplace added to it as an "upgrade", or if you have done a sealing and insulation overhaul on an older home, it would be worth asking a professional to come and look things over if you simply cannot get a good fire going.

Here's some takeaway facts:
1. Small, light wood burns faster and easier than big pieces. Use a hatchet or knife to split some pine or similar into finger-sized pieces and use these to start your fire with. Fire can be very easily choked to death by feeding it huge pieces of wood that soak up all the heat and give nothing back.

2. Don't let the fire collapse into a mound. As you add wood, try to stack is such that there is air space around each piece. Remember that without oxygen, there is no fire.

3. Stand some pieces of larger wood beside the fire (inside the fireplace, NOT on the hearth) to get them hot and dry, and only put them in place once you've got a good bed of coals with the fingerling stuff.

4. Be patient. A strong roaring fire takes a long time to build up since you need to establish a "thermal base" as well as warm up the fireplace itself. A fireplace is not something you can just decide "Hey, wouldn't it be nice if..." and turn it on and off.

Good luck, and may Hephaestus be with you. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />