Firestarters

[Polishrifleman]

I know a lot of us have packs etc.. for different occasions.  Has anyone had any experience with the Duraflame Zip match-tip firstarters?  I saw them at the local grocery store for a box of 8 for $2.  Even if the match tip craps out it should be pretty easy to light with your other source of fire.

Thanks in advance.

[garyk/nm]

Not familiar with that product, but home-made firestarters are a piece of cake.

Ingredients:
pile of tuna or cat food cans
cardboard
block parrafin

Cut cardboard in strips wide enough to fit cans (on edge)
tightly coil cardboard strips in cans until full
fill cans with melted parrafin

These suckers will burn for hours and will keep indefinitely.

I recently tried one I made 35 years ago and it works like a charm.

[stevelyn]

+1 on the cardboard and paraffin in a can idea. I also keep a 5"x5/8"  magnesium bar with a flint insert and carbide scraper attached in my pack.

[Larry Ashcraft]

StarterLogg brand wood fire starters.  Been using them for years.  They aren't the quality they used to be, but still start eight fires for a quarter.

I tried the T-lights, they just don't work the same.

No doubt the homemade ones above would work as well or better, but at $15 per winter, I won't bother making my own.  YMMV

[cfabe]

For use in my wood stove, I buy the big firelogs and cut them up into 1" slices. One slice will burn for about 30 minutes and start full-size normal-wood logs with no kindling.

[Declaration Day]

+1 on the cat food can, wax, and cardboard.  I used to make those as a kid for camping, they worked like a charm.

Compressed trioxane is great too, it's about $.75 for four at an army surplus store.

In my bug out bag, I keep a couple sandwich bags packed with dryer lint.  It's free, plentiful, and works excellent.

[Firethorn]

No doubt the homemade ones above would work as well or better, but at $15 per winter, I won't bother making my own.  YMMV

+1

While it does indeed sound interesting, the simple fact that commercial products are so cheap makes messing with parrafin(heck, even finding it in block form) not worth it.

[K Frame]

"heck, even finding parafin..."

Grocery store in the canning & jelly making supplies aisle.

Hardware store.

A couple of old candles.

A box of your kid's old crayons.

To heck with the tuna cans...

Dixie Cups. The waxed kind.

A different twist...

Take cardboard, cut it into strips, roll it tightly with about 1" of old cotton shoelace in the center, and tie it with a twist of wire or binders twine.

Then soak the entire thing in melted wax for about 10 minutes. Fish out and use the shoelace as a wick.

We called them firebugs in Scouts.

[brimic]

What? noone carries a tinderbox on them?

[mfree]

when it was dark and cold and that fire needed to come up in a hurry, and this was "truck camping" mind you, I always had two tricks up my sleeve.

One was to soak a rolled up paper towel in cooking oil. The other was to roll up a "stick" of wax paper.

[Ex-MA Hole]

In my hiking days (i.e. 30 pounds lighter), I was partial to used dryer sheets.  They store real well in a empty film canister.

[Stickjockey]

To heck with the tuna cans...

Variation #3

Instead of tuna cans/dixie cups and cardboard, use dryer lint and empty egg cartons.

[charby]

I like sawdust and parafin instead of cardboard.  Melt the parafin, stir in as much dry saw dust as you can, pour into egg cartons, metal ice cube trays or whatever form you want them to take up.

Charby

[280plus]

take a page of newspaper. Fold it lengthwise several times to create a strip of paper say 1.5" wide. Roll the strip up into a solid "tube" tie it together with a piece of string. Dip the whole thing in melted paraffin (sp?) and let it soak for a little while. Allow to cool. These are the homeade firestarters WE used in the boyscouts. You can even make teeny ones for your "micro" survival kit. I know mine has a couple. I do know others that swear by dryer lint...

[griz]

I used to make the sawdust/wax/eggcarton version. They work great and burn for a long time. For an easier to light but quicker burning firestarter, work some vaseline into a couple cottonballs. They ignite instantly and are good and hot.

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

Has anyone had any experience with the Duraflame Zip match-tip firstarters?

Yes. They work great.

However, we now use fatwood and newspaper. (Mostly because they work well too and the supply of other kinds of firestarters is erratic.)

- NF

[K Frame]

Oh yeah...

Fatwood!

Amazing stuff.

You can store it in water for weeks, take it out, touch a match to it and it will light and burn bright and hot.

[Azrael256]

What? noone carries a tinderbox on them?

I do.  An old tin can containing a flint, a striker made from an old file, a couple feet of jute twine, a dozen 2" squares of char cloth, and, of course, a punk for lighting cigarettes.  You should see the looks I get sitting in front of the student union lighting a smoke with flint and steel.

[p35]

+1 on the Trioxane- comes in a handy little tube from the army surplus place. I've heard that Real Men in Viet Nam actually used C-4 to cook their vittles, but try to find that on the open market....

[Dave Markowitz]

Hexamine is the stuff that comes in a cardboard tube.  Trioxane comes in foil packets.  Unfortunately, trioxane has a limited shelf life, although the fumes aren't as toxic as hexamine fumes.

Back when I was in a ground search & rescue unit in Civil Air Patrol, I carried a magnesium road flare in my buttpack.

"What, all the wood's wet?  No problem."

[erik the bold]

Dang.......I thought this was a continuation of the Doritos Habanero thread  

[K Frame]

"I've heard that Real Men in Viet Nam actually used C-4 to cook their vittles, but try to find that on the open market...."

Yep, but that's been going on almost as long as there has been explosives other than black powder.

There's LOT of energy stored in those compounds (sorta has to be).

A guy I worked with at NRA said it was possible to bring a canteen cup of water to boil with less than an ounce of C4. You just NEVER wanted to try to put it out by stepping on it.

[Firethorn]

Iron oxide filings cut with aluminum shavings in a plaster of paris matrix with 4" of 1/4" magnesium tube molded into the center. 'Course, igniting the magnesium is best done with a portable gas torch, but from there, it's on like donkeykong.

Any particular reason you want to use thermite as a firestarter?  And if you have a gas torch, why do you need this for starting a fire?

[K Frame]

"And if you have a gas torch, why do you need this for starting a fire?"

Because it's both fun AND cool?