Firestarter Ideas

psy-ops

psy-ops

Joined
Sep 27, 1999
Messages
3,164
my wife bought these incense starter charcoal they are really compact 2"x2"

I am thinking this could be better than kindling to keep a fire going.

any ideas?


this isn't to replace anything but to get the fire past that small kindling fuzz to something substantial.



also I was at farmers market and bought a bag of this wood which lights up with a match, they are the size of chop sticks and it was really cheap $4.00 for a big zip lock bag.
I am gonna see if it starts just with magnesium.

any one use this before and know the name?
 
Try soaking the stuff for a while and see if it still lights. If it does you are in business. Otherwise cardboard egg carton filled with anything that lights and wicks from shredder paper to wood shavings, and soaked in parafin wax.
 
To expand on Jimbo's egg crate fire starters, I save the lint from the lint trap of the clothes dryer and use it to stuff the egg "cups" before filling with parrafin. In a month, you'll have enough to do several egg cartons worth.

It's free and it works great!
 
Hey Guys....

By using the same concept as making char cloth, you could do the exact same thing using small pieces of wood...

A wood such as Balso that can be found in any hobby store could be nicely cut up into small squares, packed into a tin and turned into Char Wood....

A couple small pieces like this travels well,, alot better than char cloth does,as it doesn't tend to break and crumple into dust..It could be wrapped neatly in tin foil then wrapped in duct tape to protect it from the weather and or damage...

ttyle

Eric...
 
shaved some mag onto a very small pile of pine bark. once that was going I put one of those "lighter" (?) wood pieces I recently purchased. got it going in no time. then I put some wood charcoal in a terra cotta pot I bought in thailand and I am heating up my lunch.




does anyone know about sterno? my father went out and bought a sterno kit as a back up, in case of energy shortages. he lives in new york. I told him to get a propane set up for availiblity and cost. he chose his way, was it a good choice.

at least my father got a few supplies together.
 
Chris,

Although I'm glad to see your Dad making an attempt, sterno is way too expensive. Your suggestion about propane was valid and credible.

Mike
 
The firestarter wood that you bought could be the high-resin wood often referred to as fatwood or mayawood. If sliced feather thin, it is supposed to light from sparks (but I haven't tried it personally).
 
this fatwood or maya wood, I got it started with a very little flame from a few tiny pieces of pine bark and maganese then I threw in some charcoal and I had a small cooking fire.

I actually think it is better than parafin. it is more substantial. though the parafin is more compact.

I still carry both.



DWK, thanks for the name.

chris
 
When you are in the woods look at pine trees for pitch. Some of the trees will have a lot of pitch running down the bark. Sometimes its hard and sometime it softer. Collect chunks of this. It is a good help in starting a fire in damp conditions.

Thanks to stmike88 I also sport a fresnel lens in my small nessisities bag. That 4"X5" model works wonders if it is sunny.

Other than the standard matches, lighter and magnesium I always take a candle. Light that and start your fire in damp conditions with your candle.

I like the idea of that fat wood. It is resin drenched and works real well in my wood stove.
 
I found some really cheap fatwood at Lowes Hardware in the fireplace accessories section.

This stuff starts very easily but remember if you try and cook while it's still burning that it gives off a lot of black smoke like a kerosine flame and the food will tast kind of "punky".

I still like to use cotton balls soaked in melter bees wax. Most of the ones I have tried burned from 10 to 20 minutes...plenty of time to start your kindling. Cotton balls and vasoline also work great but are a little more messy to handle and burn a little faster then the bees wax does.
 
Muzzleup, so far as I know, you, recondoc, and I are the only ones on the various survival forums that use wax/cotton balls instead of the more popular (and messier) vaseline/cotton balls. I (and recondoc) make mine a little differently; I light a candle and drip the wax on half of a cotton ball, leaving the rest to fluff up and catch a spark from a ferro rod. They burn about half as long as yours, but burn quite hot and plenty long enough to get any damp tinder burning.

Normark, I keep meaning to try char wood, but haven't gotten around to it yet. But a great way to make char cloth more "durable" is the way it was done in the old days: leave it in the can you made it in. This serves the dual purposes of keeping the fragile material from disintegrating, as well as having a char can handy for making more in the field. What I do is make a batch, dump it out, and then cut and make a second batch, and then put both batches into the can. Since there is so much "shrinkage" in making char cloth, it's easy to get a lot of prepared tinder in a small tin. For travel, I just put the tin of char cloth in a ziplock baggie to prevent moisture from ruining my char cloth. I also keep another ziplock full of pre-cut cotton squares in my mussete bag so that I can make more char cloth in the field, without having to sacrifie my shirt. :~}
 
I have played with a ton of variations on the travelling tinder deal, I even had my owm idea of what the best thing was.

But after playing with all of it for a couple months....

I came back to fatwood, also known as lighter pine, fatwood, and mayawood.

To get it going, scrape it with your metal match striker, make a pile of those scrapings, and put a spark or two into the pile. It is that easy.

Fatwood is cheap or reasonably easy to find, waterproof, all natural, and effective. What else can you ask for?
 
Hi Marion,

I'll second that, I love Maya-wood and every scout in our group has an 2.5" piece of Maya-wood with a hole through it at one end attached to his belt/keychain of pack.
A piece of maya-wood together with the Light-My-Fire Large Military Firesteel will get you a fire going almost everywhere in a short time.
The Maya-wood is imprevious for water, you can soak it for days and it does not absorb a drop of it and the resin in it although it burns with black fat smoke smells very nice.

Best Scouting wishes,

Bagheera
 
V Shrake;
Acutally when I do my bees wax and cotton balls I soak the FIRST cotton ball in the wax and while it is still tacky I place a 2nd. cotton ball on top of the first and then wrap the two in a piece of wax paper and twist it off so that it looks like a Hersheys candy kiss.
I call these my Kiss-of-Fire (K.O.F)

But I also like the fatwood like Marion says and its cheap when you buy it in a fireplace access. area of a hardware store or in WalMart.
 
V Shrake;
Acutally when I do my bees wax and cotton balls I soak the FIRST cotton ball in the wax and while it is still tacky I place a 2nd. cotton ball on top of the first and then wrap the two in a piece of wax paper and twist it off so that it looks like a Hersheys candy kiss.
I call these my Kiss-of-Fire (K.O.F)
Just unwrap the paper to expose the top cotton ball, strike, and burn!

But I also like the fatwood like Marion says and its cheap when you buy it in a fireplace access. area of a hardware store or in WalMart.

:cool:
 
V Shrake;
Acutally when I do my bees wax and cotton balls I soak the FIRST cotton ball in the wax and while it is still tacky I place a 2nd. cotton ball on top of the first and then wrap the two in a piece of wax paper and twist it off so that it looks like a Hersheys candy kiss.
I call these my Kiss-of-Fire (K.O.F)

But I also like the fatwood like Marion says and its cheap when you buy it in a fireplace access. area of a hardware store or in WalMart.

:cool:

Damn! I have been trying to delete the double taps to no avail!:mad:
 
I've been wanting to try fatwood, but I have NEVER been able to find a store that sells it, and have yet to come across a lightnng-killed pine; mostly Junipers around here. I was sorting through my firewood the other day, and came across a piece that's all scarred up, with lots of dried sap on the surface. I plan to scrape the sap off, and put it in a tin, and experiment.

Muzzleup, I remember reading about your KOF's before, but it's been a while. Sounds like you should definitely have plenty of heat to get even wet wood going with one of those. :~}
 
Vshrake,

I'm (we're) always willing to help out a fellow lover of the outdoors, just send me an email with your address and I'll send you 'some' Maya-wood free by normal Airmail, no big chunks but enough to start a lot of fires with the help of a ferrocium rod.

We usually cut the Maya-wood into approx. 2.5" long keychain chunks and drill a lanyard/split-ring hole through it and carry it together with an Large Military Firesteel from Light-My-Fire Sweden. This is a combination that's hard to beat, just ask Jeff Randall.

Best scouting wishes from Holland,

Bagheera
 
V Shrake said: "Muzzleup, so far as I know, you, recondoc, and I are the only ones on the various survival forums that use wax/cotton balls instead of the more popular (and messier) vaseline/cotton balls."

I use wax/cotton balls, too.
 
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