PJ-Cottonballs, how much is enough or too much? Testing and answers!

Dylside said:
Now I'm sure that several of these people have tested these theories to no end... and I'm sure that several of us are just completely full of the poop and are just repeating what we saw someone else post.
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I am forced to the same conclusion after reading the responses so far. Not one person so far with a different conclusion. That illuminates the knowledge base here brilliantly for me.

Right, I have a completely different conclusion. I saturate PJ cotton balls for two reasons: 1] It gives them more fuel. 2] It allows them to be extremely compact.

By saturating them I can knock all or most of the air out, and that is good. Air is free wherever I go so I don't need to carry it as I can add it later. I'd rather fill the spaces with fuel. Done this way I can condense what would otherwise be a good size bit of cotton wool down to a tiny goopy blob. Here's the essential bit – in that state it is hard to burn no matter whether I use a spark, a lighter or a match. Yet after I've really teased it out it can be done with any of them easily. It's a chore to do with the fingers because you end up wiping off a lot off the PJ. That's one of the reasons what I carry a bit off hacksaw blade. It grabs the fibers a separates them easily. Admittedly I had never dunked one in water first but as of ten minutes ago I have. No different.
 
Thanks for the information - This is what makes the forums great!!
We appreciate you sharing this experiment.
 
Below is a gist of what I'm on about:

As I relegate the spark rod very low down on my list of firelighting tools I also tend not to pre-pack huge amounts of tinder to go with them. I just want something small that will work if ever all my lighters fail. As such I adopt a different approach to many of the PJ cotton ball kits I see here. To me the cotton ball is just the wick the PJ is the important bit. As such I only use a tiny amount of cotton ball per scoop of PJ. The other way round makes no sense to me at all. It would be rather like having a candle that was mostly wick and low on wax.

The PJ cotton ball bit in the images below is saturated. I couldn't begin to guess at the ratio of PJ to cotton but there is much more. In accordance with basics of how fire works of course we can't just wade in by applying heat to a combustible material whilst ignoring the role of oxygen. Ideally, that should be foundational knowledge to all people here that aspire to build a fire, period. Yet look what happens when you tease out the saturated PJ ball. That bit, the size of a pea, should easily be enough to get a fire going. I've said before here that I use a bit of hacksaw to fluff up tinder far more often than I do just to scrape down a spark rod because it works so well at doing that on so many materials. It's another reason why I don't subscribe to it being important to be able to make a spark with my primary knife too – horrible square spine for putting any kind of pressure on and a bit of hacksaw works better.

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That's a great test Dylside! I never would of thought that the completely soaked ball wouldn't of light up. I always keep all my fire material in a Aloksak in my bug out bag.
 
Personaly I soak mine in natural shoe polish instead of vaseline. They burn longer and ignite easier. I work it all the way in and compress the cottonballs in the container. I just pick out what I need, fluff it well and ignite with the rod.

I timed one of the fully saturated cottonballs once and it burned for 5 minutes plus.
 
wildmike said:
Personaly I soak mine in natural shoe polish instead of vaseline. They burn longer and ignite easier. I work it all the way in and compress the cottonballs in the container. I just pick out what I need, fluff it well and ignite with the rod.

I timed one of the fully saturated cottonballs once and it burned for 5 minutes plus.
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I might try that although I have Vaseline as a multiple use item so I'd need to think of other things I could use the polish for too.

As far as yesterday's PJ ball play went – I gave one a complete dunking in water on the end of a paper clip. After teasing out it caught fire with a bit of a crackle but once going it was all familiar. I wonder whether the polish is the same.

As far as I'm concerned if I wanted completely impervious to water I'd just burn a bit of rubber band. The saturated cotton ball has a bunch of the merits of that but stops just short in exchange for ease of ignition.
 
I have also heard of the people after putting vasoline on their cotton balls, they then get a 2" x 2" or maybe 3 x 3 piece of al foil and make a small X incision in the middle and wrap the cotton ball in that tightly. Then they fluff out a bit and light that and apparently it burns even longer than a standard vasoline cottonball.

Also if you wrapped in alfoil but did not cut the x incision until you needed it that would probably make it watertight, maybe dip it all in wax?

I'll see if I can try make one sometime.

The only experiement I did with cotton and vasoline, was cotton buds rubbed in vasoline, so the inside was still cotton, but I did light it with a lighter, yet they all burnt for at least 1 minute, which is pretty good IMO, as there isn't nearly as much cotton on a cotton bud compared to a cototn ball.

Edit: I like this video, just shows how long a vasoline cotton ball can burn for.

[youtube]jFOpN95qB2w&feature=related[/youtube]
 
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JCK said:
I have also heard of the people after putting vasoline on their cotton balls, they then get a 2" x 2" or maybe 3 x 3 piece of al foil and make a small X incision in the middle and wrap the cotton ball in that tightly. Then they fluff out a bit and light that and apparently it burns even longer than a standard vasoline cottonball.

Also if you wrapped in alfoil but did not cut the x incision until you needed it that would probably make it watertight, maybe dip it all in wax?
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Lose the tin foil and just stick it in a bit of duct tape. PJ ball ravioli.
 
wouldn't the duct tape melt? Whereas I would think the alfoil might not melt, but I'm not too sure how hot the vasoline cotton ball flame is though
 
Yeah, the whole thing gonna burn. That's not a bad thing if you make little individual one trial ones. I wouldn't bother 'cos as above I just like using tiny little bits taken from a working bag, but I certainly see the advantage of having a couple made up like that for extremely fast ignition with cold hands or blah.
 
baldtaco-II said:
Yeah, the whole thing gonna burn. That's not a bad thing if you make little individual one trial ones. I wouldn't bother 'cos as above I just like using tiny little bits taken from a working bag, but I certainly see the advantage of having a couple made up like that for extremely fast ignition with cold hands or blah.
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so when you said wrap them in duct tape, did you mean the whole cotton ball, but then only take little bits from the duct taped wrapped cotton ball? so that way you just seal it back up and its stays waterproof/resistant?

Because with the alfoil wrapped ones, I guess they are more a "candle" then tinder, because they are claimed to burn for something like 20 - 30 minutes plus, and I think you'll have a fire well and truely started by then.
 
JCK said:
so when you said wrap them in duct tape, did you mean the whole cotton ball, but then only take little bits from the duct taped wrapped cotton ball? so that way you just seal it back up and its stays waterproof/resistant?

Because with the alfoil wrapped ones, I guess they are more a "candle" then tinder, because they are claimed to burn for something like 20 - 30 minutes plus, and I think you'll have a fire well and truely started by then.
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Nope, like below, one trial jobs. That's why I don't usually bother with this route I'd rather just take little bits from a packet as I need them. I can swim with that it my pocket and it still works. In a dire situation I probably would open one of these up and get a multiple amount of fires started from it rather than some big bang all in one effort anyway.

That said, it does have strengths in as much as you still don't need very much in there to get a good strong long burning flame so they can slipped into or stuck inside the lid of something. And there's that although it is possible to ignite a completely saturated PJ ball even after dunking in water there is still plenty of scope for operator failure. As you can have a dry bit of cotton at the very top of these and it will not get wet even after being completely submerged it is undoubtedly easier to catch. That has to be a blessing if you've really cold hands or something.

The little one in this picture burned for about ten minutes before I got bored and put it out. I suppose you could play with the recipe a bit and add in little bits of rubber band or rubber solution glue for that Winnie Mandela tire effect but I don't see it being worth it. With the right amount of PJ to cotton wool these burn plenty strong and long as they are. Too much cotton [wick] and not enough fuel [PJ] will drastically limit that. Adding some very fine wire wool or steel fur in the mix could be advantageous though.

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my experience mirrors the op's test, it's not critical to have the exact ratio IMO as long as it's a mixture

mine are confined to firestaws and as such I use wisps of cotton, not whole cotton balls- I lightly cover my fingers w/ pj and work a little into a wisp and then stuff into the straw, repeat- fluffing the contents up (you need decent volume) pretty much insures a one strike light, the pj keeps things burning long enough to get your small kindling going
 
I make pj truffles

pull apart the cotton ball place a teaspoon in the centre and wrap the cotton around it.

This gives you the dry tinder on the outside and the fuel on the inside!
 
just did my own little test. I tried the alfoil wrapped vasoline cotton ball with an x incision, didn't really work, the 'wick' would catch fire, but the rest wouldn't. So I then unwrapped that same cotton ball, and tested it with no wrapping, just on the ground outside, on the wet cement. It burnt for 8 minutes and a bit, with a bout 7 mins 45 seconds being the strong, large flame, and then it reduced to a bic like flame for the last 30 seconds or so.

I'll put a picture up showing how much vasoline I mixed into the cotton balls.
 
2 finger gobs per cottonball has always fit the bill for me. The more I thought about it, the more I think it fits the bill of half saturated. Rule! Thanks for all this input!
 
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