Do you know how to build a bonfire.

cheets64

cheets64

cheets64

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Was having discussion with a few mates I met a few years ago and they never built one, me and my school mates would build one every year, from till age 8 to 16. Every year we would stock pile wood on the half term, just gone, would sweep the estate asking anyone then hid it in the field we would build it in, then build it roughly 2-3 days before bonfire night and would get 50+ people turning up.

Hardly ever see a bonfire that is not organised by club/society these days.

No better feeling that working as a team and designing the bonfire with the right pieces of wood, always source a centre pole, dig it into the ground and then slowly place doors/fence panels on it and build around it.

We would always try and get an old sofa or two sit on it while we watch the fireworks/fire then chuck it on near the end. A bloke that was a builder would come down on the night with a van full of wood and loads of lighter fluid to get it going.

Really miss those days, all the parents would come and we would have quite a few boxed of fireworks and people would make treacle and hotpot/black peas.

So can anyone build one, did you use to build them as a kid? People just seem to buy fireworks for bonfire night yet forget to build a bonfire for owd' guy fawkes

The last few I went to where just palettes stacked on top of each other, boring.
 
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we used to build them on the council estate i grew up on back in the 80's/90's and it was pretty much identicle to how you did but we would build it for 1-2 weeks and it would still be burning slightly in the morning lol.
good times only the kids built it but all the adults would be out on the night.

you arent allowed to builds them by law anymore are you?
 
I've never built a bonfire but have built plenty enough campfires (some have come scarily close to a bonfire though :o - palletwood is dangerous when alcohol has been consumed!)
 
arknor said:
we used to build them on the council estate i grew up on back in the 80's/90's and it was pretty much identicle to how you did but we would build it for 1-2 weeks and it would still be burning slightly in the morning lol.
good times only the kids built it but all the adults would be out on the night.

you arent allowed to builds them by law anymore are you?
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We didnt have that luxury, kids from a few streets around tried to set it on fire once so we had to guard it, I lived closest and could see it out my bedroom window :p

Nothing better than checking the fire the next day and all the fog from the fires/fireworks.

Not sure on the laws, pretty sad if you cant. We would build them in a farmers field, all he was bothered about was getting rid of any metal due to him putting cows in the field in the summer.
 
The loyalists over here like to push the boat out when it comes to bonfires.

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Enter the contender from Northern Ireland! How to build a bonfire in 5 easy steps:

1. Steal hundreds of wooden pallets and place them in a large circle building it about 10ft high.

2. Crudely paint a "Dump wood" sign and leave it near the bonfire, so people dump unwanted furniture etc for you to burn.

3. Throw all that wood into a pile in the middle of the pallet circle, chucking in some tyres for good measure even though they are banned from bonfires.

4. Repeat steps 1 - 3 until the bonfire is a billion feet tall and tapers to what i guess resembles a point.

5. Cover it in litres of petrol and burn it, while getting blind drunk.


Note - Dont forget to employ a small gang of 10-14 year olds to basically live in your bonfire to stop rival bonfire builders from torching yours early.
 
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My current profile picture on Facebook is this, i'm rather proud of it:

30169310150270293671461.jpg


I love bonfires. That was just the starter, we actually had about 4x what is burning there, but due to surrounding trees we decided to feed it slowly in order to avoid harming them. I reckon we kept feeding the flames for a good 3-4 hours. Great fun and a wonderful way to pass an evening (if done responsibly). The school i teach at run a camping trip for year 8 students, one of the events during the trip is to build a nice big bonfire. It's brilliant but like you i'm always surprised at how little the kids know about the process and even more so at how many are very afraid of the whole idea. I guess from a logical perspective that's a good thing, but it's always a bit sad for me as building a bonfire is one of my favourite things that i used to do with my dad as a child (and still do in fact)
 
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I am from Lewes and we have the biggest bonfire night celebrations in the country. The bonfires are at least as tall as a house!

there are massive torchlit parades with burning crosses, they blow up images of policemen and politicians, people dress as the pope and preach to the crowd and then have fireworks and bangers shot at them! Pretty crazy really.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewes_Bonfire
 
Streeteh said:
My current profile picture on Facebook is this, i'm rather proud of it:

30169310150270293671461.jpg


I love bonfires. That was just the starter, we actually had about 4x what is burning there, but due to surrounding trees we decided to feed it slowly in order to avoid harming them. I reckon we kept feeding the flames for a good 3-4 hours. Great fun and a wonderful way to pass an evening (if done responsibly). The school i teach at run a camping trip for year 8 students, one of the events during the trip is to build a nice big bonfire. It's brilliant but like you i'm always surprised at how little the kids know about the process and even more so at how many are very afraid of the whole idea. I guess from a logical perspective that's a good thing, but it's always a bit sad for me as building a bonfire is one of my favourite things that i used to do with my dad as a child (and still do in fact)
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Yeah, tbh I think my generation was the last to be adventurous, we would build dens/tree houses/massive swings over dried river beds/hunt for conkers, we never had the internet or mobile phones and never interested in drinking until 16+, its all H and S now and parents are to blame, my kids will be learn all sorts of stuff. Get outside, sod facebook.

Nothing better than chucking some conifers on, they go up like something else, crackle and fizz.
 
cheets64 said:
Nothing better than chucking some conifers on, they go up like something else, crackle and fizz.
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I wish I had a photo of the new years bonfire my family built this year, it was epic. We had an old shed that my brother in law and i very crudely reconstructed, we then smashed a hole in the roof and stuck the old xmas tree in there. It was like a massive flammable cake with a big-ass candle of megaflames on the top.

Epic wasn't a strong enough word when that went up.
 
cheets64 said:
Yeah, tbh I think my generation was the last to be adventurous, we would build dens/tree houses/massive swings over dried river beds/hunt for conkers, we never had the internet or mobile phones and never interested in drinking until 16+, its all H and S now and parents are to blame, my kids will be learn all sorts of stuff. Get outside, sod facebook.

Nothing better than chucking some conifers on, they go up like something else, crackle and fizz.
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i think a lot of it was from having literally nothing else to do apart from play football, it probably helped that where i grew up there was a bunch of farmers fields just off the estate and in the centre of them was a largish wooded area.

we used to steal 1-2 big round bales of hay aswell every summer, roll them under a large tree and cut the rope so they would fall apart giving us something nice and soft to jump into :D
 
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