Foolproof Firestarting????

Scott Ridgeway said:
When I was a kid, we used to make smoke bombs out of saltpeter and sugar. While something like this might be good for signaling, my point in mentioning it in this thread is that they burned hot and furious. I would think a film canister of gun powder or something similar might work just as well for a must have fire.
Who knows what the chemistry is behind a road flare? Perhaps it's possible to make a smaller version. Or perhaps all this is a bit too dangerous.
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I used to add some (just a few) magnesium turnings - makes a nice firework when wrapped in a carboard tube and excellent fire lighter! Note Well: Magnesium Turnings, not powder. Powder makes more of an explosive!

Another good mix is potassium permanganate and sugar - lights remarkable easily from a lens in sunlight as well. The darker colour of the KMnO4 absorbs the energy from the focussed light.

As with all of these mixtures, the finer the powders, better mixed and proper proportions, the faster and hotter the reaction.

Main problem with these types of mixture (RedOx - Reduction/Oxidation mixtures, like black powder) is the slightest bit of damp and they are useless.

Also, as an ex science teacher with a particular bent for energetic chemistry, I know a *lot* of possible mixtures. But...

I wouldn't carry any ready-mixed improvised incendiary in a survival kit.

It's way too dodgy in my opinion. Some of these mixtures, even the simple sugar-based ones, can be ignited too easily by friction or heat. Even by simply mixing too large a batch at once! (I know, I've fallen foul of that one mixing a batch to get a large bonfire of wet wood going - was nearly very nasty.) Sometimes a tiny drop of water in the mix will cause a reaction in solution that gives enough heat to ignite the remaining dry mixture. Imagine that in your pocket/belt kit.

They are nice to know how to make in case you need them and have the materials, but I would stick to more conventional methods in my kits.

Just my two cents. I'll get off my soapbox now ;)
 
In my winter kit I always carry a few of the trioxene bars used to heat rations. Last January I had to light such a fire RIGHT NOW due to sweating too much in 18 degree weather. Once we had the shelter up and stopped moving I knew within a few minutes I was headed towards hypothermia. I built my fire and set it off with a full trioxene bar, they burn a good long time and get things going well.

Here in Brazil it is rare that you need a fire RIGHT NOW. If you get hypothermic it will be a much slower process unless you are in the mountains or dunked in a river. Even so it does get cold and miserable here and you need to be able to get dry. I use what I have on hand but in rainy season I like to carry candles (1/2 inch diameter), rubber ranger bands or innertube rubber, PJ treated cotton balls wrapped in foil work great as well.

It is good to have things on hand to make a fire in difficult conditions. I agree with learning to make fire from what you can find and learn how to get along without the extra help. I also feel that in very cold conditions or any time a dunking is possible that you should have a "nuclear option" to make an emergency fire as quickly as possible, it just makes sense. Mac
 
FInally, Trioxane bars! These have been my constant companion since the '60s. They are cheap, available, and they work!

http://beprepared.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_CK S011

You can pick these up at most army/Navy stores and all over the internet. Most internet prices seem to be a buck for a box of three bars. I buy them local surplus for about fifty cents a box. Each bar has an approximate burn time of 15 minutes. They are prescored into three tabs lasting about five minutes each. A box gets you 45 minutes of hot, enough to dry and ignite some pretty damp natural tender and twigs. With dryer fixings, 1/3 bar will get a nice fire going. Or you can put them in an esbit stove, or cook with them on the bare ground. They were originally meant to heat MREs. I believe they have been discontinued in the military?

Codger
 
I'll be a stickler to the orignal post, which reference a "single" sure fire way to get a fire started, and the overturned canoe scenario, one of my all time favorites, where all your gear gets lost and all you have is what is fastened to your body.

The firesteel is tough, and ultimately waterproof. The Trioxane/Hexamine tablets also water proof. They burn hot enough and long enough to catch otherwise damp wood.
The other thing about trioxane bars is that you can cut a small piece off and use it as your starter tinder, but save the rest for the next few fires.

In the original post, it mentioned NO TINDER available, which would be a big problem.
I guess in the Sahara you could find yourself with no tinder material? Even a desert island? but if you are near a big enough stream to capsize your canoe, then there is a high liklihood you are near trees. and even if it's been raining for days, all you would need is a decent knife to carve your way into some dry wood. I'd say a fixed blade, 3" to 5", carbon steel, with enough thickness it could be beat on a bit, when splitting wood.

So, my final answer is: A Firesteel, with a waterproof accelarant like trioxane, and a fixed blade knife, for slicing and dicing enough wood to get a sustainable fire going, enough so that wet wood could then be dried by the fire for use. All of these answers are contained in prior replies.
It's a minimal amount of gear that one could easily have in a pocket, so that it is still with them when the canoe goes over the 100 foot falls and you are on the banks of the river, cold and wet.
 
I just wanted to add a couple of comments.

lukus: I once had my hands so cold that I couldn't even operate a bic type lighter
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This can easily happen that's why Zippo lighters are good. You can open the lid with your mouth and run the sparker wheel up your pants, tree bark, whatever and it will light. No need to thumb-operate the sparker wheel.

A road flare has been mentioned a couple of times and while I haven't tried them, they seem like they would work well.

Thomas Linton : Consider the merits of the humble candle. Burns and burns. Some heat for your hands while you're at it. Various former sperts have recommended candles for generations
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Candles work great as a firestarter. Also a couple of tealight candles in a metal tin with the inside of the lid polished makes an acceptable light if sheltered.

nodh: smoke like an East German steel mill
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- What a great quote!



Another thing that works well, especially if you losing some motor skill ability is to take some fire sticks
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cut them in half and drill a hole in each end. Insert a 'strike-anywhere' match in the holes.
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and them cover the whole thing in paraffin. Completely waterproof and don't require a whole lot of motor skill dexterity to use. (The ones in the pictures haven't been 'waxed' yet.)

Doc
 
+1 for the Trioxane bars, those things are great.

I know this is kinda low-rent, but my dad used to soak a couple of charcoal briquettes in lighter fluid and dip them in wax. He absolutely refused to pay for things you could make yourself. We would use them to start all our campfires and they burn for a pretty long time. Our complaints were that they're pretty labor intensive and they're messy as hell. You definitely need to wrap them up pretty well. But they're waterproof and will burn in almost any condition short of gale force winds, we used them on many rainy weekends to get our fire started.
 
Doc, I bought a pack of those "Fire Sticks" to go into my car kit, but I didn't think of the lighter trick... interesting.

Incidentally, he probably meant paraffin wax, not kerosene. ;)
 
Was stuck in complete darkness in a field somewhere in Scotland in winter. The snow made my cigarettes little soggy (the damp got through my pack) and I had a zippo and a little blowtorch type lighter. Let me tell you, Zippos are fine and ok if you want to start and keep a fire going (assuming it is fully fueled) but the little cheap blowtorch lighters, they were great in burning my soggy cig ends to oblivion... I'm sure it may have it's drawbacks but it should work just fine and the zippo should burn for a couple of minutes.
 
Trioxane is great, however, I wouldn't consider it "foolproof". One tiny prick in that foil packet, months or years before you take it out of your kit to use in an emergency, and you could be screwed.
 
Doc, I like your trick there. I use those bars on occasion. If you break them open, they will take a spark from a steel and light, in the rough broken portion. One half, broken in half, and layed in a cross, makes a nice long lasting start for a fire. You put all your fixins beside it, light it, and then you can put your pieces on at your leisure...no trying to light your first stage w/out messing up your fire lay.

My kit has REI matches, vaseline and cotton balls, some of those tinder sticks, a chunk of fatwood, and a firesteel. Firestarters and tinder are some of the lightest stuff, so you can double up on it easily, as long as it is not a Doan tool.:)
 
Any Cal. said:
as long as it is not a Doan tool.:)
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You don't like a Doan tool? There are better options, I know, they just get a bad rep usually. I just don't understand why they are not liked more. They include tinder and firestarter all in one piece of waterproof/windproof/etc proof material. They just work.

CZ
 
I like the Doan Tool but most often I use it like a ferro rod with a magnesium handle. The key to using the magnesium is to carve off alot of it and keep it concentrated. I have a pair of these that are each tied to a hacksaw blade and a metal match case stuffed with PJ Cotton and a few birthday candles. To keep it from rattling I put a rubber ranger band around the whole thing and clip it inside a pack by the cord. Four tinders and an ignition source and all of it water and breakproof. This and the go-to big yellow Bic and I'm set. Mac
 
Bic lighter and birch bark. It dont get any easier, even when wet.

K.I.S.S.

Skam
 
Some of my tricks
1. Doan tool i've been carrying one since I was a kid they're cheap and easy if you have the luxury of time to get a good pile of shavings (which I usually collect on a piece of bark-its a flamable platform and the curvature usually provides some wind proofing.
2."fire cubes" they are the fuel source used for some of the pocket stoves. They are small individually package, burn pretty d--- hot for 15-20 min, and will take a flame from a lighter, match, or good fire steel (I image they are basically Trioaxane)
3. my last trick is the previously mentioned Vasciline cotton balls but with my own slight twist. I take steelwool pads (the finer the wool the better so not the real ruff stuff) and make a pocket in them and then stuff the pocket with the vcbs and then carry those in altoid tins. There are multiple reasons for the steelwool: 1st it's shape-able and makes a nice platform for the vcb and will keep it off of the ground, 2nd the fine steelwool burns too and it burns hot, 3rd (in a geeky nifty science class way my favorite reason) it gives you another ignition method. If you rub the steelwool between the + & - terminals of a battery the steelwool will start to burn and catch on fire and then will take the vcb with it.
I have to comment of the flare idea though. The idea of a flare seems great cause those things just burn & burn dry or wet. However I think they could be rather dangerous to use; if you are starting a fire your going to be up close to these things and they burn bright enought to cause eye damage if you look at it which you would need to do to place the tinder on it. Now those little flares that Les was using on survivor man wouldn't have that issue as you just need to shoot it into your prepaired wood pile.
 
DOC-CANADA said:
...Another thing that works well, especially if you losing some motor skill ability is to take some fire sticks...
Doc
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I like this, I've seen commercial versions of it. The only downside to fire sticks is if you drop them on the ground in your average wooded type area they are almost perfectly camouflaged (I dropped a small cube of it on the ground once, must have taken me 10 minutes to find the damn thing. This is one reason I tend to like the white tinder options, right up until I drop one in the snow sometime...).

Anyone have any orange or yellow tinder options for us clumsy people?
 
Runs With Scissors said:
Road flare.:D
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thats actually a fairly good suggestion. The USFS uses what they call "fuze-ees" to start controlled burns and they are awsome. We got ot play with them a little when I took my redcard course (though I haven't gotten on a crew as of yet; hopefully next summer!) and they are intense. A little larger than road flares and burn for a couple of minutes a piece (at most) but the flame is HOT. I don't know what they cost, but they are quite water/weather resistant and fairly stable. If you have room they are probably as close to fool proof fire starting as it gets!
 
Lots of tinder + some dry wood + a firesource, such as a Bic lighter + HAIRSPRAY!
 
Scott Ridgeway said:
When I was a kid, we used to make smoke bombs out of saltpeter and sugar. While something like this might be good for signaling, my point in mentioning it in this thread is that they burned hot and furious. I would think a film canister of gun powder or something similar might work just as well for a must have fire.
Who knows what the chemistry is behind a road flare? Perhaps it's possible to make a smaller version. Or perhaps all this is a bit too dangerous.
Click to expand...

While your other suggestions might have merit, I would recommend you forget about using "gun powder" for starting a fire. Gunpowder comes in many forms, but the two main types are the old fashioned black powder (possibly what you are thinking of) and the newer smokeless powders. Black powder is an EXPLOSIVE, it is labeled as such, and it should not be handled or used for anything by somebody who doesn't understand it fully. There are also a few less corrosive alternatives to black powder that are sold, but I would apply the same caution to them. Smokeless powders come in scores of different varieties, and, while technically they are propellants instead of explosives, they are not to be fooled with by someone who doesn't understand them, either. In the past I've seen in print discussions of how to use a disassembled cartridge and a firearm to help start a fire in an emergency, but I am not going to recount that method here because it could also be hazardous if you don't know what you are doing. Striking a spark into gunpowder or anything that could flash in your face, possibly causing blindness, could just help finish you off in a survival situation. Be safe.
 
A thought about using guns to start a fire. Well, you manage to keep hold of your gun and ammo with that but you loose your fire starting stuff? To me it feels that I would lose a gun before I loose my firestarting stuff. One way is to stuff a firesteel or something in or with the gun. It might be easier to keep track of a meter long metal thing than something small, well tape the small thing to the big then.
 
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