Coal

M

Munky

Joined
Jan 12, 2007
Messages
446
Has anyone thought of carrying a small piece of that charcoal that is pre-soaked in lighter fluid? I cant think of the name of it off the top of my head. I think that would be an insanely good way to start a fire. Let me know what you guys think.
 
Lighter fluid tends to evaporate, unless I'm mistaken. Not to mention lighter fluid seems to get weaker each new year...
 
I remember now they are called Matchlights.

I am sure that lighter fluid evaporates but these seem to last in the bag for quite a while so I dont know.
 
Burned some real coal in a campfire a couple of weeks ago, found it washed up on the shore of lake erie, once that sucker started it burned and burned. Weight to energy I think it would be hard to beat, but I don't know how hard it is to light initially and it kinda stinks I wouldn't want to cook over it.
 
Coal and charcoal are two different things. Coal is a rock mined from the ground and per your grade school geology lessons is compressed carbon that used to be living things eons ago and the charcoal you buy for barbequeing today is made from burned wood. It is either in chunk form or in compressed briquette form. What he found on Lake Erie was probably washed up from an old shipwreck or spilled from on or offloading at a dock somewhere and spent time rolling around on the lake bottom till being washed up where he found it.
 
Commercial charcoal is pretty good for camping if you want to cook over an open fire, and can't use local wood. I actually prefer it. However, it's pretty much a camp luxury. I've often wondered how it'd do for backpacking. A couple briquettes are sufficient to cook a single meal, give off lots of heat for it's size.

Having grown up here in So CA, I've never really had much opportunity to play with coal. AFAIK, it just isn't used very much around here except maybe for a few industrial applications.
 
I was thinking along the lines of a survival application where you would carry one briquette and use it to start an emergency fire.
 
Here's a recipe I used to carry in my Boyscout days. Take a paper egg crate put a charcoal briquette in each space and pore melted wax over the whole thing. Cut in to individual squares. when you light one of these they will not go out.
 
in theory the survival briquette would work but I think some petroleum jelly soaked cottonballs in a water proof match case would be a better bet for a psk
 
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