Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting tinkering with fire starting materials & techniques

I've had a block of fire starting cubes from Coghlans or someone like that under the seat of my 4x4 for several years and haven't used it much. Saving it for a real emergency! My mix of fatwood sawdust and shavings in a flammable binding was a concious copy.

For the time and money invested, buying fire paste or such fire starter blocks is a better way to go. I've enjoyed working with this pitch saturated wood and have given it as gifts to selected friends and family who hike and hunt. I over-focus at times, but this is a relatively harmless fad!

Below is a block cut from the long piece shown leaning against the door in one of the pics posted earlier on this thread. It shows the first few slices or splits of wood from the block. I used a knife with a nine inch long blade and press down on both the handle and the back of the blade near the end to get such tidy thin splits. Light pressure and rock the blade a bit at the start.



Some fir fatwood slats stored in plastic jars. If I didn't give it away I'd have a lifetime supply on hand. My two sons heat with wood, on the wet coast, and I gave them each a large shoe box of this stuff. Their kids love it for starting fires.