Vaseline-soaked cotton balls vs Maya Sticks/Dust

cosine,

I've got another question, Evolute. I noticed that you shaved your fatwood into a pile about the size of a dime. How long will that flame for when you throw a spark on it? One second? Two?
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That should be good for about 8 seconds of flame, at about the size of a small-to-medium-sized candle flame. Fatwood (good fatwood... the type that is so saturated with pitch that it is sort of translucent reddish, with a strong piney smell) is a surprisingly potent fuel.

Mike
 
In the olden days we used Jute twine, wooden matches and parafin.
Shred some twine (2").
Take the shreded part and lay it paralell to 3 or 4 matches.
Wrap the matches and shreded twine (8-10 turns) leaving a little shreded stuff sticking out for easy lighting.
Melt some parafin wax (leftovers from canning jam) and dip these in the wax liberally. Let cool and store anywhere. You can dunk it in a river and still light em' right up. Is permanent. Still have some from back then tested one recent. Worked like new 30 years later.
 
Thanks gorean, I'll take all the different ideas I can get. I couldn't get Evolute's small scrapings to work, I kept knocking all the shavings around, I'm going to have to practice and develop a technique. Your matches are a nice difference.

I've saved this and most other firestarting threads, one of these days I'm going to put together all of these home brew solutions and try them all, just for fun. When I have time...
 
Jute twine is also a great tinder to catch sparks from your ferro rod. I keep about 16" or so wrapped around the handle of my BSA Hot Spark rod that lives on my SAK's fob. I wrapped a couple of ranger bands around the twine to sort of waterproof it. I figure that short of going into a river this is good enough for normal duty.

In use I like to take a piece of twine about 3 inches or so long and unravel it and make it into a nest. This I place inside/on top of a nest I made of the inner bark of a Juniper tree (the best natural tinder readily available here). I then shave/scrape some fatwood (I keep a small stick of it also on my SAK fob) on top of the whole shebang. The twine catches ANY spark, no matter how time, which in turn ignites the fatwood, which fires up the Juniper bark, and the whole thing gets transferred to my fire lay.

I prefer to build my fire by leaning twigs and other tinder against a small log (about 2" by 10 or 12"), with enough room to slide my tinder bundle underneath. Every time I try the tepee fire lay I knock it over trying to get the flaming tinder nest under it. :rolleyes: :)
 
V_Shrake said:
Every time I try the tepee fire lay I knock it over trying to get the flaming tinder nest under it.
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Point several of the major framing sticks and jam them into the ground, if you have easy to split wood (cedar) you can also use shingles to both form a base and hold the v-structure by splitting it and wedging in several pieces of the frame. I have lately taken to building fires on rock beds, which makes that trivial as you just jam the sticks inbetween the heavy rocks. Then you can later convert this readily into a bed or at least a small heater.

-Cliff
 
for those unused to building fires lays/pits, not all rocks are suitable. Rocks that have water in the pores can explode if heated.

Pat
 
I'm not experienced with firestarting but I was able to successfully light a small pile of fatwood shavings. I was using the ferro rod on one of those mag blocks & was having the same problem as sodak. While scraping down the rod w/ a pocketknife, I couldn't get the pile to light and every few scrapes, I'd scatter my my shavings. Then I followed the advice on another post of putting the rod as close to the pile as possible and moving the rod while keeping the striker still and that seems to work for me.

By the way, I never knew what fatwood was until I read some of the posts here. I bought a small bag of it for $0.97 at my local walmart.
 
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