Fire starters

[CDNPO]

I used the WetFire tabs for the first time early last spring on a northern Ontario bear hunt. It was a cold, wet week and those little suckers worked great. Usually just lit them with the bic, but tried the ferro rod one time and they seemed to take the spark well too.

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

 

[Kevin Dill]

There was a time when I made my own firestarters:

Plastic screw caps from pop botttles
Paraffin
Vaseline
Cotton balls
Heavy fishing line

Saturate a cotton ball with vaseline
Make a loop from the fishing line
Place the loop in the empty bottle cap and follow that with the cotton ball
Melt paraffin and add enough to fill the bottle cap to rim
After it cools enough, use the loop to pull the firestarter from the bottle cap

It's a messy job and takes some practice to get it right, but the results are good. Those things burn a good long time. Just be sure the saturated cotton ball is exposed before trying to light. The paraffin really extends the burn time.

 

[rayporter]

here is an old fire starter trick.

take a small box of strike anywhere matches and make a cover of the bottom from aluminum foil.
pour wax over the whole box. I usually used a half box. but after cooling your have a block of matches encased in wax with I would wrap the rest of the foil around.
to use one match you cut it off with your knife. in an emergency you could strike the whole block.

with the new matches you almost need a bic to strike them. they just don't strike on a surface like before.

 

[20DYNAMITE07]

I'm a huge fan of Rutland Safe Lite Fire Starters. I'm fairly certain they're compressed cardboard and wax and come in little squares. Each square is 1.5"x 1.5" x .25". They sell them as charcoal starters for Kamodo style grills (Big Green Eggs). They have no accelerants on them, leave zero residue, they have no smell, and they are dry to the touch.

I cut off a .25" strip, and use that as a starter, so you can get 6 per square. If you score it with your knife it starts easily with a ferro rod, and it will burn for about 3 to 4 minutes if I were to guess.

A box of 144 costs about $20 on Amazon. If you cut them into .25" strips and get 6/block, that makes 864 starters and comes out to about 2 Cents per starter.

Oh... and they light your BBQ too

https://smile.amazon.com/Rutland-50...fire+starters&qid=1551296012&s=gateway&sr=8-4

What a sheet of them looks like...

 

[Gunnersdad49]

I usually carry two styles, both home made.
First are vaseline soaked cotton balls. These get used most of the time. I have a few in a ziplock baggie in my pocket, few in the fire kit, few in the pack.

Second, I'll take a section of newspaper, and roll it really tightly. Its usually a few pages, so it turns into a long roll about as big around as the diameter of a quarter. I tie it every 2" or so with cotton string, and cut between the ties, giving me a dozen or so 2" rolls of newspaper tied with a string. I dunk those in melted wax from leftover candles. Let them dry, and done. They are waterproof. You can unroll a little or a lot of them to make them easier to light. The unrolled end burns quickly and takes a light well. The rolled end burns for quite a while. I'll unroll half, leave half rolled, and they will start just about anything I have needed lit.

I usually have one or two of these newspaper rolls in my pack and one in my pocket in case I can't get the fire lit with the cotton balls.

This is something I learned in Cub Scouts a lot of years ago, and I enjoy showing younger hunters how to make them. Sort of like reloading, it may not always be the quickest or cheapest, but it is the most fun.

 

[loggerchas]

My daughter collects pinon sap when following me around small game hunting in eastern CO. Like others have mentioned, Vaseline is very effective, but messy. We dipped cotton balls in melted pinon pine resin and have had great results with these. Sap dries hard, crack open an encased cotton ball to expose the fibers and lights right up. The resin as it heats soaks into wood it sits on - spreading the flame out from the tinder and onto the fuel itself. Use these all of the time in our wood stove at home and when out camping.

Granted, these may be more work than what has been offered, but it was a cheap dad-daughter thing we started and it gave her a "project" as we were out hiking because she was hunting sap nodules while I was finding quail/bunnies.

 

[*zap*]

Pine cones work well to add to what you are already using especially if they are sappy. They will extend your starter burn time.

 

[Randle]

I usually use trioxaine , it works well for heating water. And OK for fire starter . I will supplement it with old man's beard and pitch pine wood to get a fire going right away. I also carry Vaseline cotton balls. I just picked up some weber grill starters that rs3003 mentioned they burn for around 15 minutes with a tall flame that wicks up thru the kindling stack I may just carry a couple of those in my "fire kit that that never gets used unless it is an emergency" . Those and pitch pine worked really well today when I gave them a test run out on my property. A couple sticks of pitch pine extends the flame of whatever my fire starter is and weigh nothing .

 

[nuclear worker]

cotton balls dipped in Vaseline or cotton pads soaked in wax for me.....with a small piece of fatwood.....lights with a spark from my ferro rod.

Pick up a box of cotton rope. The kind they use for wrapping around your head when you get a perm . You can cut in any length you want. Cover in Vaseline the n you can wrap around sticks worked really good when me and the wife had to spend night on the mountain in Colorado

 

[Maverick940]

I usually use trioxaine , it works well for heating water. And OK for fire starter . I will supplement it with old man's beard and pitch pine wood to get a fire going right away. I also carry Vaseline cotton balls. I just picked up some weber grill starters that rs3003 mentioned they burn for around 15 minutes with a tall flame that wicks up thru the kindling stack I may just carry a couple of those in my "fire kit that that never gets used unless it is an emergency" . Those and pitch pine worked really well today when I gave them a test run out on my property. A couple sticks of pitch pine extends the flame of whatever my fire starter is and weigh nothing .

I'm a Trioxane fan as well. I carry about a half dozen tabs of that in my pack.

 

[PA Hunter]

I make my own with cotton face pads dipped in wax as a wafer.

 

[Farmerlentz]

I've found that cotton balls soaked with Vicks vapor rub burn way longer than vasoline. Didn't time them but they were at least double my vasoline cotton balls on burn time

 

[mmac]

Fire ribbon works really well too.

 

[xcutter]

I use the Coghlan Fire Paste. Works great in my opinion and a tube lasts me a long time.

 

[dla]

I've found that cotton balls soaked with Vicks vapor rub burn way longer than vasoline. Didn't time them but they were at least double my vasoline cotton balls on burn time

That's interesting. I've found that lightly vasolline coated cotton balls light with a spark. Coating them with Vicks would be more "dual use" to me cause I like the menthol and eucalyptus.