An alternative is, having built your raft, and prepared your kindling and wood as before. Have a large handful of bone dry matchstick size twigs ready,  place your tinder in the centre of your raft (this should be the size of a grapefruit) and ignite it with your flint or other, once its burning, split the handful of kindling in two, and place them to form a cross on top of the tinder. This should catch fire almost immediately, and once a good flame is going do the same again, but this time making a wigwam affect by crossing them from the opposite side. As the heat increases gradually ad more and more wood getting thicker until you’ve got a good fire going. Never be tempted to rush things, fire needs to grow at its own pace, and remember if it starts to fade you can increase the oxygen flow by fanning it.

The woodpile, gathering wood and preparing it for the fire is just as important as lighting the fire. I have been on backwoods cooking competitions with Scouts, where the wood gatherers have thought they had the least important job. When in fact without them, and there ability to fined suitable kindling to start the fire, and then having the foresight to collect sufficient, and suitable wood to keep it going. Without them doing this first the best, people you have to light the fire, prepare the food, and cook it, are of no use without the wood gatherer, having first collected the correct materials to start the fire. So having established the importance of gathering the correct wood for the job, we now need to determine what these woods are? Soft woods usually burn quicker and easier than hard woods so are better for starting the fire. They’re also good for boiling and quick cooking but tend to give off sparks, usually they tend to be easier to cut and split, but this is not always the case. (Ho no it’s that dreaded list again)  In alphabetical order softwoods Alder, Aspen, Cedar, Hawthorn, Horse Chestnut, Lime, Pine, Poplar, Spruce, Sycamore. Hard woods burn longer and give off more heat making them ideal for worming cold nights; they also make good hot coals used when roasting. Hard woods Apple, Ash, Beech, Birch, Sweet chestnut, Hazel, Holly, Hornbeam, Larch, Oak, and Willow. Having decided what’s what, it’s not quite as easy, as hard and soft woods; usually we have to do with whatever’s at hand.

now let’s look at what you will want from a fire when it comes to cooking? As usual the number of people in your group will determine the type, and size of fire required, so with this in mined lets look at the basic requirements for cooking. Any fire will do for boiling water, all you need is sufficient heat to boil the water, but if you are cooking say a stew in one pot, then once you’ve got it to the required heat, you must then simmer it, otherwise it will burn. If you were cooking on gas or electricity, you would turn the gas or electric down to achieve this, so what do you do when cooking on an open fire? Well you have two alternatives, one reduce the fire/heat, or two, lift it above the excessive heat that is causing it to boil, and the only way to do this is by razing the billy/pot above the flames, alternatively you can move it to one side, and basically that’s the secret to cooking on an open fire.
Instead of turning the heat down as in conventional cooking, when cooking on an open fire the only alternative is to lift the item you are cooking, above the flame. So with this in mined lets look at haw we can achieve this, first we must suspend our pots on something that we can lower, or lift, according to what we are cooking. 
My favoured method for hanging pots over the fire is three metal rods, instead of sticks, but obviously I only use this method on standing camps' and I use builders line pins, or temporary fence pins, they are made out of lengths of bar with a hook, or a Y at the top that’s used for fastening the line/tape too. They make an excellent frame to hang your pots on, alternatively you can use green sticks with a Y shape at the top, I also suspend the pots from metal hooks fastened to a chain; again in a temporary camp you can use green sticks of an appropriate shape, see photo. Another alternative is flat metal bars to sit your pots on, or a crane, and as before you can use a metal rod for this, but as this type of hanger is normally used on a small temporary fire then you would be expected to use a suitable green branch. Another method used regularly on standing camps is a griddle, ether one that’s self-supporting or something similar to the ones used on B-B-Qs that just sits on top of your fire place.