Fire starter idea

G

gadgetgeek

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May 19, 2007
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I have had some trouble with some of my home-made fire-starters, so I've been working on making them better. One of the problems is that I would get one that would work, make a batch, and the rest would fizzle. Or rather, not take a spark as easily.

But I think I've got a better idea now. Why so much focus? I live in a rain forest. Even if dead standing wood can be found, there are few natural tinders, and I like to make sure things will work.

Anywho, the idea, which may be old news to all, but hey, here we go.

The ingredients are denim, and paraffin wax. I heated the wax to near around smoke point, and dunked small (1x3inch) swatches of cloth. they fizz a bit, which I assume is moisture being boiled out of the cloth, humidity was high. Then I pull them out, allow as much to drip off as will, and cool. This is a departure from my older attempts, as I felt a more wax is better approach. I was able to light these by scraping the middle of the patch with the end of a going gear striker, and a couple hits from a LMF and same striker got them lit. a 20 min dunk test didn't slow it down much, but did a little. Although, that doesn't bother me, I have plenty of ways for carrying dry tinder. I think a huge factor with how these work is the limited amount of wax. I think in the other attempts, the thick wax was quenching the sparks, and able to pull too much heat away.
 
Have you tried liquid paraffin? Lamp oil from Wal-Mart? Or even Zippo lighter fluid (Naphtha)?
 
GG, you're right, wax needs to heat up an liquify before it will start feeding the flame.
If there is too much wax to heat up quickly it will not help the flame to burn.
 
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I hear what GG is is trying to accomplish. Its hard unless you really rough up the denim or carbonize it. It used to be a rainforest here in the bay area, although we're in drought mode, it's always really humid/foggy, this morning 95%. Just a tiny piece (dime size) of a cotton ball treated with vaseline or bees wax, or rendered tree resin. This little piece burned (5 mins) with one spark from the ferro rod (light my fire) and my GSO 3.5.



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Big candle wicks!

Where do you put cotton balls slathered with petroleum jelly in your tinder continuum? They are not so good with a magnifying glass but work for me with ferro/lighters/matches/electric sparks. I have thought of dyeing the cotton black to help with magnifying glass starting.
 
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I tried waxed cotton balls. I thought they might burn longer than PJ cotton balls.
They didn't. On average, the same burn time. I couldn't fit as many in the container, & it was harder to make. I found no advantage, & am back to PJ.

One problem was wax melting & running out the bottom, instead of feeding the flame. They were definitely harder to light.
 
Thomas Linton said:
Big candle wicks!

Where do you put cotton balls slathered with petroleum jelly in your tinder continuum? They are not so good with a magnifying glass but work for me with ferro/lighters/matches/electric sparks. I have thought of dyeing the cotton black to help with magnifying glass starting.
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I'm all for candles and candle wicks! Survival joke candles anyone?!

I usually just have a cotton pad or two in little ziploc baggie that aren't treated along with some chapstick. In my back country kit I've got the same baggie setup wrapped around a chapstick tube secured with a piece of bike inner tube to keep it all dry. I like having a slighlty bulkier chapstick tube with a rubber grip when its really cold and you've got gloves on. At least then I'm less likely to drop it or lose it. All you have to do is fluff out a small piece and smear some chapstick on and you're gold. It's nice to have the cotton pads open for other uses like filtration, first aid, makeshift tp :o

You're right about the magnifying glass thing too. I've found it easier to just add a little less chapstick and have more dry tinder to work with only using the petroleum j aspect as an extender with a magnifying glass or fresnel lens or parabolic mirror. One of my old backcountry friends used to use his little home made soda can alcohol stove with the bottom polished to use in lieu of parabolic mirror. I've found the biggest difficulty with these optical methods is that it requires you stay really still, the weather must be favorable, and the sun has to be up and optimum. Although dyeing cotton blacks a pretty fun idea! Maybe some RIT dye or shoe polish maybe?

As one of my first chef mentors used to say "There's more than one road to get to rome."
 
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I like vasoline and cotton, the trouble for me is that since most of my packs can get subjected to mid 30s C heat, they make a mess. So I was trying some other sorts of things that should be more stable at higher storage temps. I feel like that is a good improvised tinder, But I was looking for something that worked as well with out the goop factor.

Codger, are you meaning to add to the wax? I'm thinking with the temps I normally deal with, any volatiles will be long gone by the time I need them. I've dried out a full zippo in my pocket in less than 12 hours here. But maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Be4ns, I was surprised by how easy it started. I did rough it a bit, but its fairly lightly worn denim, and it really took off. I had tried it earlier with some Burts Bees, and that went pretty good as well, once I'd busted up the fibers a bit.

anyway, took some with to work in case I needed them, but it threatened rain all of both days, so instead of fully dousing the fire between each damper cooking session, we just let it die down, and used the coals to get it going. Still great object lesson for the kids. Empty fire pit to fire in 15 seconds with no matches. I think they got the picture of why fires need to get put out!

There are lots of ways to get fires going, and when I'm on my own I'm far more willing to fiddle around and take the 10-15 minutes to carefully do my prep and not "cheat" but when time is important, I want it to work, and be repeatable.
 
I like cotton ball and Vaseline twisted up with fingers and push it into a large plastic drinking straw. Cut straw ends and melt them. You have a fire starter ready to go in a waterproof/leakproof container. Works great!
 
mec003 said:
I like cotton ball and Vaseline twisted up with fingers and push it into a large plastic drinking straw. Cut straw ends and melt them. You have a fire starter ready to go in a waterproof/leakproof container. Works great!
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That's genius!
 
mec003 said:
I like cotton ball and Vaseline twisted up with fingers and push it into a large plastic drinking straw. Cut straw ends and melt them. You have a fire starter ready to go in a waterproof/leakproof container. Works great!
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A cheap air curler is great for the melting part.

A proper containers solves the vaseline in 'da heat problem. 35mm film containers are headed for museums but other possibilities abound.
 
gadgetgeek said:
...Codger, are you meaning to add to the wax? I'm thinking with the temps I normally deal with, any volatiles will be long gone by the time I need them. I've dried out a full zippo in my pocket in less than 12 hours here. But maybe I'm misunderstanding...
Click to expand...

I meant to add the accelerant just before ignition, not as a presoak. Instead of the wax. It, naptha or lamp oil, could be carried in a sealed eyedropper bottle without leakage or evaporation.
 
Dug out the chapstick rig since I never bothered in all these years to take photos. Pretty cheap and easy to make kit. The finished one has an esee firesteel that came with my izula 2 tied as a lanyard tucked inside too. All you have to do is reach in pull out some cotton dab some chapstick on as needed depending on your conditions and situation and viola. I pulled some cotton out in both shots for illustravtive purposes.

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Codger, its a worthy idea. Unfortunately I work with children, often boys who have enough bad ideas, I'd rather not give them more. this is a tinder that is stable enough I could let them use it.

For my usage, straws are too labor intensive. I'm sure they work great, but I was able to make a large altoid tin full of tinder patches in a few minutes. There is also a minor aspect of burning plastic while preaching LNT.... probably makes no difference, but who's to say?
 
Then look at tender that is commercially available like firepaste and wetfire cubes? I use trioxane as an emergency accelerant. Birch bark which a member recently sent me is fantastic and easily lit.
 
I can potentially use enough of it that I wouldn't want to drop that kind of money. But I've used those as well, and they do work very well, as well as tinderquik tabs. Even buying in bulk, I've got better things to spend money on. Unfortunately despite all the other invasive species here in Australia, birch isn't one of them. There are some trees that do have useful bark, but we have a strict ground-deadfall only policy, otherwise every tree would have all the branches below six feet ripped off. But a dozen or more kids picking up every twig that's fallen gets a good size pile of wood in pretty short order, and they think its fun.
In the past I've used everything from a dixie cup full of metholated spirits (very cool delayed ignition, so you kind of "magic" up a fire), to an 80,000 BTU roofing torch to get a fire going, it all depends on the circumstances, and tools at hand, and the overall goal. Also, as I get more experience teaching groups, I'll be much more able to tailor the overall experience to their interest and skill level. I think with some of the older groups, things like steel wool would be good, and sometimes I'll be able to do one-match challenges and the like. It all comes down to the time allotted and this is just one more tool in my kit that I can use.

I will admit that I'm in a bit of an unusual situation, so my rates of usage will be a bit above some others. Hence my looking for a bit of a production level solution. Another advantage that I didn't mention is that these burn long enough that with a decent pile of match sized kindling, I can easily do a no-knife fire. Also important since at the moment most of the places I work would prefer we reduce our knife usage. Its one of those things where its not a huge deal (and we are expected to be carrying a knife) but sometimes its best to keep sharp things hidden, depending how nutty the kids are acting. Although, yes it should be that a fire is the far more dangerous thing, but its dealt with on a macro level, where as using a knife is much more a micro task, forcing a bit of disengagement from the group, where as I can manage the group and the fire with much less overall risk to myself.

Again, all good thoughts from everyone, the main thing is to look at your own circumstances and have a solution that is going to work for the situations that you are in. For some, pre-collected natural tinders are going to be a really good solution, for others its just bits to improvise with when the deck is a little against you. I could certainly get by with a whole lot less than I do, but I'm a nerd and love looking for other solutions to problems that don't really exist.

The next thing to figure out is an overly complex bearing block, so I can get better at bow-drills.
 
There is place by me that makes fire starters with paraffin wax and wood shavings in a little paper cup. A Dixie cup or the little ketchup cups at McDonalds.
 
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