Who keeps wet fire in their kits ?

Ausseknifeknut

Ausseknifeknut

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ive ordered a packet of wetfire tinder , cos I had a cube of it before , and tried it with my lmf army firesteel , it took a spark and lit very easily. Does anyone else include wetfire in their kits ?
 
Cotton balls soaked with petroleum jelly in an empty prescription bottle. Why paymoney for plastic wrapped chemicals when 27 cents of household items does the trick?
 
Go to Home Depot and get a pack of 16 or 20 for 3-4 bucks. It's in the grill section. I keep a few of those in my kit.
 
PitchAndMoment said:
Cotton balls soaked with petroleum jelly in an empty prescription bottle. Why paymoney for plastic wrapped chemicals when 27 cents of household items does the trick?
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Birch bark. Why pay 27 cents for petroleum and cotton when you can get for free something that does the trick? :)
 
The only fire tinder that I have paid for, was Coghlan's Fire Sticks for $2.

Dryer Lint is free and a friend gave me some Tinder Quik & Fast Fire Tablets. I prefer Dryer Lint and natural tinders.
 
DAVE_M said:
The only fire tinder that I have paid for, was Coghlan's Fire Sticks for $2.

Dryer Lint is free and a friend gave me some Tinder Quik & Fast Fire Tablets. I prefer Dryer Lint and natural tinders.
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In some conditions the prepared wax and sawdust fire starter sticks are the bees knees. There are quite a few brands out there now and available in most box stores and sporting goods stores.
 
Wetfire work pretty good. I have a few stuck around the place. One advantage over other chemical based starters is that they don't out-gas anything corrosive like grill lighters. I had one opened for a couple years and it still lit. They seem to handle heat not to bad either.

Depends on what you want it for I guess. in the conditions I run into here in south east queensland, wetfire would be a good option if I wasn't so confident in my fire skills, and there was a good chance of having to rely on only a spark for fire.
 
neeman said:
The birch bark might be free, but the air fare to peel it of a tree is a thousand dollars
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Sounds like a business opportunity! :D

Seriously though, every region of the globe that I am aware of has some sort of indigenous plant material that has been used for thousands of years for fire starting. Still... nothing wrong with acquiring and carrying modern manufactured fire starting materials.

Out of curiosity, what did the ancient middle easterners use to start fires? Ignition and tenders? The area of the U.S. where I lived most of my life had no birch trees either. And I just recently found the trees here in my new location. Friends who live where the trees are common have sent me bark from time to time and it is very lightweight (paper thin) and a small amount lasts a long time if used judiciously.

Might you ask Ron Shimelmitz, from the Zinman Institute of Archaeology of the University of Haifa in Israel who did archeological studies of hominid fires in the Tabun Cave? A paper he and colleagues published suggested man made fire there possibly as far back as 350,000 years ago. Even in more recent ancient history people living in that region surely had firestarting materials.
 
I have used many kinds of fire starters but I have never killed a Tree in the process as I have gone back to this same place for over 20 years and my Tree's are doing very good thank you very much.!** On some trips though I have used Cotton Balls to really start a fire very fast to stay warm.! Good luck no matter what you use is the way I see it.*
 
Having dabbled in forestry I might have killed a few trees in my time. If it helps I planted quite a few saplings in that time and the trees always grew back one way or another. :)

I don't carry wetfire but I do carry other commercial products. Tea candles and esbit tablets get some use. My most common tinder is probably the local newspaper. Free, easy and delivered to my door whether I want it or not.

Birch bark works great when available.

On the trail I tend to use alcohol stoves.
 
Codger_64 said:
Where did "kill a tree" come in?
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No clue.

I've come to the conclusion that most people don't understand that we use fallen trees or branches on the ground.

BTW, you're right, there are trees in LA that are great for tinder. I completely forgot about the amount of loblollies we have. Fatwood isn't too difficult to find, but it would be nice to have some birch bark :D
 
This guy is more than a bit overly sensitive. Hes known for that. Sure hes a member of these fine groups.


[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A_JPcBwYGmo[/video]


[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7FAI_-woNh4[/video]
 
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Errrp! I am thinking this tact should stop here. Looking at a few local birch trees both in the wild and in the city, I often see the papery bark peeling of it's own accord and laying on the ground around the tree. With fallen trees, the bark seems to endure even when the cambium layer underneath has rotted away. Also, looking at a couple of articles and videos on bark harvesting (for large projects) the cambium layer isn't cut and removed from the standing trees. Thus even those trees aren't typically killed. As I don't chop down living trees for practice and projects, they have nothing to fear from me. :)
 
Birch bark is still fine after the wood is rotten. Often you can find a dead tree that's still standing with good bark. You can see a standing birch tree from a distance, so they're easy to find.

Knife relevant content: Traditionally puukko handles are often made of stacked birch bark disks, like a stack leather handle. There are often disks of wood, antler, and bone mixed in. The birch bark outlasts all the other materials.
 
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