Can anyone recommend a good fire starter for camping use?

The tender is most important...I recommend any reliable lighter and Ultimate survival wet tender.
 
Codger_64 said:
Calcium carbide will burn in a water puddle. It gives off acetylene gas when wet.
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You ought to try Eelmental Calcium. Powder it, and put it in water (reacts much quicker and more fully that way), use a sturdy glass bottle, Then collect the hydrogen in a big balloon!

I used to play with it as a kid, and it was so much fun!

I used to put it in big balloons and use a magnesium fuse. Once lit, you can let the balloon go, and it will go boom up in the air.

If you mix the hydrogen with oxygen inside the balloon, you will get an even more energetic result (without doing this, you will still get a great boom).

All you need is a sturdy glass bottle, water, and a balloon!
 
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Why go out and buy stuff,when you have perfectly good things that can be used or combined to make great tinder sitting around the house? dryer lint,cotton balls,hand sanitizer,vasoline,used oil,alcohol,etc. good fatwood is free if you apply yourself and harvest all you can when you find a good source.I'd rather spend my extra $ on a new knife or other actual gear than tender.Not that some of the products out there aren't great at what they do.But I've never failed to have fire yet(knock on wood) with stuff I have around the house anyway.Give me flint and knife and a little time to harvest the makings and I'll give you fire.But I've been at it a long time and like to do things the old fashioned way just to stay in practice,cause sooner or later,in a real survival situation you're going to run out of those nifty little packs of designer tinder,or soaked cotton balls,or whatever expendables are in your kit and then what do you do?
 
rickc71 said:
Why go out and buy stuff,when you have perfectly good things that can be used or combined to make great tinder sitting around the house? dryer lint,cotton balls,hand sanitizer,vasoline,used oil,alcohol,etc. good fatwood is free if you apply yourself and harvest all you can when you find a good source.I'd rather spend my extra $ on a new knife or other actual gear than tender.Not that some of the products out there aren't great at what they do.But I've never failed to have fire yet(knock on wood) with stuff I have around the house anyway.Give me flint and knife and a little time to harvest the makings and I'll give you fire.But I've been at it a long time and like to do things the old fashioned way just to stay in practice,cause sooner or later,in a real survival situation you're going to run out of those nifty little packs of designer tinder,or soaked cotton balls,or whatever expendables are in your kit and then what do you do?
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Not let your fire go out? :D
 
rickc71 said:
thanks crewdawg.gonna have to check out the sparkie.looks like another great piece of gear and i like the smaller size for mini kit use.heres a vid (not mine) of the blastmatch.love mine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQdp5EDnKLE&feature=player_embedded
I'm also a big fan of dryer lint and vaseline cotton balls.I have also found hand sanitizer soaked cotton balls to work well.I keep a waterproof match safe stuffed full of hand sanitizer soaked cotton balls in my kit.great fire starters,and can also be used to clean your hands and small wounds when needed(a little more versatile than the vaseline) Here's a tip,go to cracker barrel and get a few of their small glass syrup bottles with your pancakes,great containers for a little used oil.If you want something even smaller,I use the single serving size glass texas pete bottles to carry a shot of lighter fluid(for the zippo) and one or two of rubbing alcohol in the med kit.
My wife(or who ever is doing laundry)empties the dryer lint filter into a plastic coffee can I keep sitting on the laundry shelf for ready access.I have never carried a bic or matches into the woods with me(just my preference) Always a fresh filled zippo,flint and steel or equivalent and tinder(usually several sorts) Even if the zippo gets wet or runs dry it will spark and I usually double up on flints in the zippo just to make sure I have an extra.
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Thanks - I really like the idea of hand sanitizer instead of vaseline!
 
@Crewdawg Check it out,I think you'll convert as I did.And it gives you the extra uses of the sanitizer as well.Make sure and pull them apart and spread them out some when lighting up.If you leave them in ball shape or clumps the outside just chars. If you spread them out thin,they burn much move evenly. Lately I've been unrolling the cotton balls into strips before soaking/packing and making a sort of cotton "log" that is easier to pull a piece off of and use for fire starting.It makes it easier to pull off as much or as little as you want to use.Dryer lint works just as well soaked in some sanitizer and easily pulls apart,but my big use for dryer lint is to make my own fire sticks.Using exam gloves and vasoline i work the lint into beef jerky sized sticks as long as a ziplock snack back is wide.I roll the sticks in wax or parchment paper(whichever we have on hand) and fill a snack bag with my fire sticks.The paper keeps them from just melting into one huge clump and you can pull one out and light the whole thing.The tighter you pack the lint the longer they burn,just don't make them too thick.I tried lint/vasoline "patties" once to see how that would do,works good if you make them really thin and can be stored in a plastic dip can separated by wax paper.
 
rickc71 said:
@Crewdawg Check it out,I think you'll convert as I did.And it gives you the extra uses of the sanitizer as well.Make sure and pull them apart and spread them out some when lighting up.If you leave them in ball shape or clumps the outside just chars. If you spread them out thin,they burn much move evenly. Lately I've been unrolling the cotton balls into strips before soaking/packing and making a sort of cotton "log" that is easier to pull a piece off of and use for fire starting.It makes it easier to pull off as much or as little as you want to use.Dryer lint works just as well soaked in some sanitizer and easily pulls apart,but my big use for dryer lint is to make my own fire sticks.Using exam gloves and vasoline i work the lint into beef jerky sized sticks as long as a ziplock snack back is wide.I roll the sticks in wax or parchment paper(whichever we have on hand) and fill a snack bag with my fire sticks.The paper keeps them from just melting into one huge clump and you can pull one out and light the whole thing.The tighter you pack the lint the longer they burn,just don't make them too thick.I tried lint/vasoline "patties" once to see how that would do,works good if you make them really thin and can be stored in a plastic dip can separated by wax paper.
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Cool! Thanks for the ideas/info! In the past I have simply pulled the dryer lint aprt/fluffed it a little from it's compacted state in my "vacuum packed" ziploc baggie and used it dry to catch the sparks from my Sparkie, then used that small flame to light the soaked cotton balls/gauze. I'll have to give your technique a try.

Last year I was deployed to the desert and walked into the briefing room to find a young Lt trying to scrape the remnants of a sticker off a desk using only water (limited resources there) . For some reason we always had a TON of hand sanitizer laying around everywhere, and I said to the Lt who was struggling with the sticky residue, "ya know hand sanitizer is partly alcohol"...it was fun watching the light bulb come on, and he soon had the mess cleaned up. :D
 
too solid said:
I've seen the aurora fire starter and a gerber bear grilles. Can anyone recommend something you've had good experience with? I don't know anything about them and don't want to over pay for something that isn't up to standard.
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Did ya git your question answered?
:)
 
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