3 Essential Tools for the Home Hearth

Fireplace tools can help you avoid possibly burning your hands and arms. (Epica/)

When we can’t be gathered around a glowing campfire in the wilderness, the next best thing is a warming blaze with family and friends at home. Having the proper tools on hand makes for a safer, cleaner-burning fire that is as much a pleasure to tend as it is to sit by. Here’s a look at some basic tools you’ll want for your home and hearth.

Fireplace Sets

If you want everything you need for your fireplace in one setup, a tool set on a stand might be for you. (AMAGABELI GARDEN & HOME/)

If you want to go all in from the start, a complete fireplace tool set with its own stand is the way to go. They usually offer some combination of a poker, tongs, an ash shovel, and a sweeper for tidying up before, during, and after a blaze. Some sets come with fancy brass handles, but you’ll never go wrong with classic black.

Tongs and Pokers

A pair of tongs make it easy to reach into a fire and rearrange burning logs and coals. (Epica/)

If you prefer to keep your number of fireplace tools to a minimum, consider just a set of tongs and/or a poker. Tongs are indispensable for getting the back log into just the right position to burn all night. And a poker is the quintessential tool for doing exactly what it says: sitting and poking at the fire (whether it needs poking or not). A poker with a built-in blow pipe allows you to direct oxygen in the right spot without singeing off your eyebrows.

Bellows

If you need to breathe new life into a dying fire, save your own breath and use a bellows. (AMAGABELI GARDEN & HOME/)

Fires need oxygen to ignite, and they need it to stay lit. Sometimes the only way to feed enough O2 into the coal bed is with a bellows. Blacksmiths have relied on them for centuries, and they are the ideal way to stoke up damp or wet wood or rekindle the blaze after it dies down.