Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Best Simple Firestarter

Simple, light and effective.

I also carry a flint and steel.

And a Zippo to light your bics when your hands or the lighter gets wet. miles

Bic with a few wraps of gorilla tape around the handle. Tape can fix stuff and burns. Be careful with dryer lint. If it is non-treated cotton (blue jeans) it should be fine. Treated kid clothes or synthetic not so much. Cotton balls are probably easier.

One course I took years ago... my old gunpowder goes this way now... mix powder with acetone and pour the goo into ice cube tray, about 1/2 inch or even thicker..

Once you light it you have a mini flare.

Flares we try to carry for super emergencies.

Other than that we tend to carry dry hemp and a striker of some flavor. And try to start fires that way as often as we can. So its a reaction thing... not ...hmm how the F does this go again.

But then I'm anal and have other backups that most have mentioned in my survival thing.

Going to look into that packet of wet fire stuff,if I can figure out what it is, if an Alaskan says it works... well I'd just assume it does.

I've done 'em all, now settled on flint & steel and grease/waxed cotton balls as the simplest and most bombproof.

I've had BIC lighters come apart in my pocket into small parts of no use to me. I carry a piezo electric lighter along with flint & steel but do not count on it with the same confidence that I do the more failsafe flint & steel.

All of my grandkids from 8 years old have learned to start fires with flint and steel, of which there are many low cost versions now on the market. Last year I equipped every grandchild with a flint & steel (ferrocerium actually) and some homemade fire starters. When out on picnics, hiking or hunting etc. we have contests among them to see who can start a fire the quickest with material in their pocket or pack plus whatever is available on site. This on the wet Olympic Peninsula.

This next is slightly beyond simple. My homemade fire starter wafers are fatwood sawdust and fine shavings waxed just enough to let them stick together when packed into mini-cupcakes with a waxed cotton ball stuck on top. Each wafer is about the size of a mini-Mars bar and will burn for at least five minutes and some have lasted nine minutes. Each goes in a little trinket sized ziploc. Some have old gunpowder in the mix like Specneeds said.

I prefer a mix of one part vaseline two parts paraffin as less messy, but like BC30 Cal, keep them inside a ziploc till ready to light. Waxed/greased cotton balls need to have a few fine fibers teased out to start easily with flint and steel, but like BC30Cal said, they light easily even after being under water for several minutes.

See note about gunpowder and acetone... I have been really impressed.. because its a cube it doesnt' burn super fast like loose would.... and its EASY to make, no mess with wax and such.

That's exactly what I do. I've had way more failures of fancy lighters than I have bics. 2 bics ups the odds of success significantly. I carry a LMF FireSteel, but never needed it.

I'll suggest since it's sort of training for your kids, to use 4, 5, 6, however many methods and variations of that with them.

that way they know how to make fire when it's needed and not just with select ingredients. I did that with mine when they were small and they are 'smoking good' on fire making!

Beside, kids are natural pyros, right?!

Fritos. Light a handful and you'll see what I mean.

Impossible. I'm a Frito addict and NO chip will ever see flame.

Simple? Lighter and trick candles.

If in the woods and in a bind, pine cones work very well. Gather some up for starting your fire.....

This is good.

It had been raining for three weeks. Not a pine tree within miles. Hemlock, alder, fir and cedar. Hemlock is compressed water. You can squeeze water out of any dead wood. A bigger problem than igniting a flame is to keep it going long enough to dry out tinder and larger sticks.

Fun and well worth while to work with kids and teach them how to get a useful fire going.

So, what's your trick in this situation?

Dwayne,

Seems like we're pretty similar when it comes to fire starting. I'm usually carrying more fire starting means that most would find necessary. I find that having 3 methods of starting a fire is foolproof, and redundancy brings security.

Hope all is well with you, too! Have a great summer!

Jordan

Boy Scout juice (gasoline)

We use homemade fire starting "cookies" made of fatwood sawdust/shavings stuck together with a paraffin/Vaseline mix and with a greased cotton ball on top. It burns for at least 5 minutes, usually 8. I used to use Trioxane but haven't found any lately. We also carry pre-split fatwood sticks to feed in and keep the under fire going if needed.

The idea is to keep a hot little fire going long enough to dry out twigs above it till they will burn, dry out more, etc. It is kind of intensive, and you never stop drying larger pieces of wood. Dry some twigs and put them under cover or inside a plastic bag overnight to start a fire the next morning.

Best source of twigs and sticks is the dead lower limbs on evergreens under an overhanging canopy. They may be damp but are not soaked like anything touching the ground is. Start with as close to hair diameter twigs as possible. Break off forks so that the fine sticks lie close together and parallel rather than springing out too far apart to feed the small initial flame. It takes awhile to get a fist diameter bundle of the small twigs half the diameter of toothpicks or less.

If you have a vehicle, chainsaw, splitting maul, gasoline or diesel you have more options than when backpacking. On a super wet backpack hunt one afternoon I used a saw blade on my knife to cut out a 6 inch long piece from under the driest log, then shaved/split that as thin as I could.

Below is a pic taken while we were elk hunting in early Sept. on the driest day I ever recall.



Then another taken about 11:00 AM on a dry sunny day while hunting Roosevelts in the Olympics.

This maybe should be in a separate thread but you mentioned a fire starting kit for grandkids. Here is a version of what I gave to each of mine. It all goes in a Dollar Store school pencil pouch, below.





Flint & steel; thin fatwood slabs that can be split by fingers if needed; storm proof lighter (which I don't much like); some firestarter "cookies"; windproof matches & striker; Sol reflector blanket; and a whistle. Missing is a finger diameter candle an inch long that is in all the other kits.

If going without a daypack, I take along the flint & steel and a few firestarter wafers in a pocket.



I like the angled head on some piezo electric lighters better than I like the expensive storm proof lighter. Both shown below. The angled head is a much easier design to actually start a fire.



One of our homemade firestarter "cookies" under construction below. A big table spoon of slightly waxed fatwood sawdust is placed in a mini-cupcake paper, placed in a small metal cup, hammered into a tight cake, and a greased cotton ball stuck on top. The paper top folds over the half full cake and that goes into a mini-Ziploc.

I have a bucket of waxed fatwood saw dust in my garage, and can make ten years supply of these cupcakes in an hour.

Triox bars are available by the case on AMAZON.