Warm up in no time with these easy DIY fire starter ideas!

[Ken Larson]

For you that are in areas that OK fires these techniques may come in handy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foLTcf2iu90

 

 

[David Thomas]

Good ideas – I’ve used all of those and they work, although I find the Vasoline soaked cotton balls to be pretty messy.  Jokingly: belly-button lint and ear wax works as well, adds no pack weight, and trims grams from your body during the trip.

Even easier is a square foot of waxed paper.

And more versatile is 5″x5″ or 6″x6″ square of waxed cardboard (free behind any grocery store as it is used for some produce boxes).  It doubles as a canister stove base.  A square inch or so is plenty to get most fires started.

I’ll also mention an emergency technique I used once when my wife dumped her kayak at 59N (I’d somehow landed in 4-foot breakers we didn’t see from the backside and couldn’t wave her off in time).  She was cold and wet on a remote beach.  I dug a hole for my canister stove, starting stacking drift wood on top of it and pulled the stove out when the sticks lit and before the stove got hot from the fire.  I had a roaring fire in 4 minutes instead of 10 minutes had I started with making tinder, etc.

[Bob Moulder]

Yes, PJCBs can be pretty messy, although if you wrap them in waxed paper the way taffy candy is wrapped and then place those in a small snack-sized Ziploc bag the mess can be well contained, and the waxed paper makes them easier to start.

For starting with a firesteel, it helps to leave some cotton fibers dry, so dip the cotton ball only halfway into the melted petroleum jelly to make sure some fibers can be lit with sparks from the ferro rod.

[Matthew / BPL]

Love the taffy wraps. Great idea!

[Gary Dunckel]

David, the good people at Vitamin Cottage gave me what seems like a lifetime supply of waxed cardboard (a huge box). I haven’t had much luck at all getting it to light and then stay lit. I tried several approaches and nothing worked. So…I’m wondering if there are different ‘grades’ of waxed cardboard, where some have more (or different) wax in them than others. What’s the trick to making them work, guys?

There’s no way I would trust these as fire starters. A few of them would work as kindling, but I can always find dry twigs for that, even in winter.  I’ll probably just make a couple of 6″ x 6″ winter canister stove bases with what I have left and call it good.

[David Thomas]

Gary:  Hmmm.  I wonder if it is plastic-soaked cardboard rather than wax-soaked?  The stuff I find locally is definitely wax and it lights about as easily as a candle wick. If you pry up one ply, that corner lights even easier.  Easier still if you cut into the edge with a knife blade like turning a branch into a fuzz stick – then it takes only a very short exposure to a Bic flame.

I just double-checked on a piece of what I have and it lit super easy and quickly.  There was no point in fraying or fuzzing the edges – I couldn’t expose it to a Bic flame for any shorter time (although I’ve had some that had a heavier wax coating).

I’ll send a chunk to Brockway Drive.

Although wax paper and waxed cardboard are available inside and behind, respectively, the grocery store, you can convert any paper or cardboard to waxed with a crayon.  Or with a block a paraffin.  Paraffin stays on better, is clear, and therefore you turn a map or permit printed on computer paper into both a more weatherproof permit and a better emergency fire starter.

[Gary Dunckel]

Whoa, David. Who knew that they might cheat and use plastic to waterproof the cardboard? And this, from an organic grocery store. Don’t trouble yourself about mailing me a sample of your ‘good stuff’ David, but I appreciate the thought. I’ll hit up my produce guy at Safeway and see if his boxes are different.

Plastic makes sense now that you mention it, as there was quite a bit of smokey fumes coming off the pieces I burned before they blew itself out.

This dirtbag dumpster diving stuff can be full of surprises.

[Jerry Adams]

take one egg’s worth of a cardboard egg carton 0.07 ounce.  Wrap on the outside with aluminum foil.  Add 0.18 ounce wax chips (for example, whittled from a parafin block).  Put on tray and put in oven at 200 F.  Keep an eye on it, as soon as it melts, remove from oven.  When it starts to solidify remove the aluminum foil.  The foil is to keep the wax from running all over the place.  When you’re done, it weighs 0.25 ounces.  The wax soaks into the egg carton to make it waterproof.

That’s enough BTUs to get damp wood going.  Maybe you need 0.5 ounces total for wet winter conditions.  Maybe 0.15 ounces for dry wood (or you don’t need a firestarter at all).

The egg carton provides a good amount of wick.  Put a bunch of sticks below, because some of the wax will melt and run onto them and the whole mess will burn good.

Wax has more BTUs per ounce than paper or wood.  0.07 ounce egg carton to 0.18 ounce wax is a good ratio that provides enough wick and good heat per weight

I have to try one these boiling 2 cups of water.  That should just about get it boiling, depending on the configuration of stove, windscreen,…  I bet one of those conical aluminum ones would work good.

[David Thomas]

0.25 ounces of hydrocarbons is going to have about 312 BTU heat of combustion.  If you get 30% of that transferred into a pot, you could rise one pint (one pound) of water 94F or one cup (a half pound) of water by 187F (from ice water to boiling).

[Jerry Adams]

On your thread, didn’t people get 2 cups to boil with 7 grams = 0.25 ounces of wax?

[David Thomas]

Seems like you’d need a HX pot to do that.  I’ve been meaning to take a SS double-wall coffee mug, cut most of the bottom out for a tea candle, cut holes in the outer shell at the top for gases to exit and insulate the sides with neoprene.  The tall profile of the “pot” and the longer contact time between hot gases and the pot ought to help.

[Matthew / BPL]

That’s an interesting idea. I’d like to see how the doublewall mug turns out.

[Bob Moulder]

Hacking the double-walled mug is an excellent idea!

Looking forward to those results, for sure.

[Ethan A.]

The waxed paper wrapped taffy style is a great idea. BTW the popular firestarter in my scout troop was called a Jerry Bomb, named for our scoutmaster. It was a bundle of self-striking matches, with cotton string wrapped around it, and dipped in liquid wax. Created a big initial flare which got the kindling going.

[Ben C]

I think we need to mini-fund David’s idea.  I like it.

[Jerry Adams]

I don’t like the term Jerry Bomb : )

[Gary Dunckel]

David, you sly dog – I received an envelope yesterday with a perfectly-sized piece of your waxed cardboard. So this morning I placed a piece in my chiminea and put a Bic to it. Man, what a difference over the “natural, organic” piece of cardboard box I’d tried before. Not as efficient as my preferred Strike-a-Fire fire starters, but a whole lot lighter. My produce guy at Safeway is going to hold a box like yours for me. I think that a 6″ x 6″ piece should work perfectly as a winter stove base. And I’ll wow my buddy with some Thomas shock-and-awe fire starting next week when we do an overnight truck camp (our periodic night of burning wood, sipping whiskey, and talking smart).

Thanks for doing this, David.

[Tom V]

i just use weber fire starters. They are cheap at about 3.50 for 25 of them.

[David Thomas]

Gary, Yes, a 5″x5″ or 6″ x 6″ square makes a great winter stove base.  Even in the summer, it evens out the ground surface for a more stable stove base.  And multi-purposes as a fire starter in a pinch, a cutting board and a stable place to set your mug of coffee.

Tom,  Would those Weber Lighter Cubes function as Esbit tablets?  Looks like they may be made of the same stuff.

Speaking of Weber (the BBQ grill folks), there are “fire starters” sold by the bag of 150 for $9.50:

I’ve used them very successfully on boat-camping trips.  One in a mini-stove, 3 to kick off a campfire.  3-5 in a charcoal-lighting chimney with sticks and pine cones on top of them.  There are lighter options for backpacking, and you want to keep the petrochemicals away from your other gear, but they start off with a moderate flame and settle down to a hot, long-lasting coal.  I played with some as a sold fuel and while the initial heat rate was good, once the lighter fluid burned off, it didn’t put out the heat very quickly as a coal and, as expected for a mostly carbon (versus hydrocarbon) fuel, the weight per BTU wasn’t as good as butane, WG, or wax.

[John S.]

The Weber cubes have been tested, but I can’t remember the outcome.

[Gary Dunckel]

I tried the Weber cubes a couple of years ago, thinking maybe they could replace Esbit tablets. It was a miserable failure, with oily smoke covering the pot’s bottom. Harder to scrub off than Esbit residue, too. So the few that I have left are strictly used to start a fire in my chiminea.

[DAN-Y]

I agree with Gary on the residue left on pots but they make an awesome fire starter for small backpacking size wood burners.

[J R]

For zero-mess vaseline cotton balls, cut a segment of a drinking straw, melt one end sealed, stuff vaseline cotton ball inside then seal the other end.

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