Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Fire Starters

What do you guys like?

I usually have a lighter on me but I've also started carrying a ferro rod in the car and pack etc. Looking to see what you like for fire starting plugs. I've heard that cotton balls soaked in petroleum jelly stored in old film canisters was a staple but the wonders of modern chemistry has me wondering if there's a better alternative. Something that starts easy, when wet, wind resistant/proof, and portable.

I make the egg carton, paraffin, saw dust or wood shavings, drier lint etc. put in a wick. Can get wicks on amazon. Put in a zip lock

works well in wet, cold conditions. I carry a road flare too later in fall


[video:youtube]https://www.firewood-for-life.com/egg-carton-fire-starter.html[/video]

For backpacking, the lightest and one of the most reliable is the aforementioned vasoline cotton balls. Store them in anything waterproof. Ziplock freezer bags work great and they're very light weight. The trick, though, is the amount of vasoline. Vasoline doesn't burn, it melts. You can't light it with a match. You want it to nicely coat the outside of the cotton but be sure to keep the inside of the ball dry. To use it, pull it apart and the dry inside will light instantly with a spark. As the vasoline heats, it evaporates and the gas is what burns for 10 to 15 min. Usually 1 or 2 strikes from a striker is all it takes to get one going.

When I was just learning the tricks, I once tried to melt vasoline and soak it into the cotton. The cotton sucked it in immediately and thoroughly soaked the inside. You couldn't start those things with a blow torch.
The easiest way I've found to make them is to put a dozen or so balls in a ziplock bag, add a big dollup of vasoline, and knead them while watching TV. It takes a little practice to learn how much vasoline to use. Oh - make sure the balls are real cotton. They'll have a cotton ball symbol on the bag. Some are made from synthetics and it won't burn nearly as well as real cotton. Walmart sells them in jumbo size. Those will burn extra long.

Walmart road flares. They’re not terribly heavy and give 15 minutes of nearly guaranteed high quality flame.

^^^^ This. What the farmers use to start burn piles. ^^^^

Varies with season and location. Where, and when, I hike, hunt, fish, etc varies from one extreme to the other so far as moisture thus challenge of fire starting.

When it is very dry in my area, fire may well be more risky than no-fire. Fire management is more important than fire starting. [bleep] burns explosively. I generally pack a butane lighter and a pack of "windproof" matches.

When it is wet, especially after it's been wet for a while, fire is nearly impossible. 100+ inches of rain a year .. that sort of thing. The only real solution is to not need it in the first place. That means making choices that avoid chances to get wet. Skip stream crossings. Neoprene rain gear instead of breathable barriers that can fail -and- go slow enough you don't sweat so you don't get wet from the inside. In those situations, I'll sometimes carry .. I forget what they're called, but basically they look like 1/2 x 1/2 x 4 inch pressboard sticks soaked in paraffin. I have road flares in my truck but I don't carry them into the woods. Often the wood in the forest is so wet it has to be "cooked" for an hour or two before it dries enough to burn. Fire is endothermic. Stay dry.

A buddy of mine comes out to the range one day and opens a Nalgine bottle full of water, pours out the contents on the concrete and I see a ferro rod and cotton ball. He pulled the cotton ball apart and on the first strike, it ignited and burnt for about 10 minutes. According to him, you need to soak the entire cotton ball and it won't matter if it gets wet.

I know a dry cottonball won't hardly light at all with a striker for me.

Cotton balls soaked in petroleum jelly work awesome. If you pull one apart and make it very open and stringy, it doesn’t take much of a spark to get it burning. Very reliable.

Hand sanitizer with a high alcohol content. There's a bunch of it available cheap lately.

It works to sanitize your hands too!

I’ve been known to nuke VCBs in the microwave to get them really soaked.

Spearminted some and found that mineral oil works just as well and soaks the VCBs more easier.

The fuel squares for the Esbit stoves works very well too.

I also like bicycle tire tube cut into rings. They light easily, burn HOT, and fairly long, and will light with water on them.

cotton balls will produce a flame but it is not very hot. if you need a fire get trioxane. trioxane is a little hard to get and esbit will work as a substitute but is a little harder to light. on a rainy alaskan trip i used a dozen cotton balls in an attempt to get a fire and gave up. half a bar of trioxane got the job done.

i always have esbit or trioxane in my coffee kit and i do make coffee every day in the field rain, snow or shine. stomp a hole in the snow and light off a bar and start to heat water every time. test it before you trust it.

The Coghlans fire sticks are pretty good too.

I want to be certain that I can get a fire started when I need to. So, I carry several types of fire starters.

I carry a BIC lighter at all times. This is usually the easiest. But they don't always work when it's cold and wet.

I carry a flint strikers (ferro rod) to light my stove. No reason to waste a match and (as stated above) BIC lighters don't always work.

I carry a couple of Coghlans waterproof Fire Sticks. They work best if you break one on half and light the ragged end. I think they sawdust soaked in paraffin and are great for starting a campfire.

And last, I also carry a box of Coghlans waterproof Matches.

Any/all of these items can be purchased at your local sporting good store.

It's fun to impress Boy Scouts using natural fire starters such as fatwood, or pine sap, or the inner bark of an aspen tree, or pine needles from a Ponderosa Pine. But those natural fire starters are often a lot of work and I carry the stuff on my list because it's easy and certain.

^ ^ ^ this ^ ^ ^

DOANS bar, the ^ ^ cotton balls, the old
tightly-rolled-newspaper-and-dipped-in-melted-paraffin
thing is really good still
Might have to drain a soup can's worth of fuel
from your transportation if things get dicey

KC
Have you used piezo lighters? I like those when I can find them (usually at a tobacconist shop). Bics are sure hard to use when cold and wet; trying to flick the wheel on the flint to get a spark.

Lotsa good info in this thread. I go a step farther than cotton balls & Vaseline, more work than anybody but a codger is likely to do but it makes GREAT fire starters.

I gather a gallon or so of fatwood sawdust and shavings. Mix a batch of 1/3 Vaseline and 2/3 paraffin (can’t remember exactly) and pour that over the fatwood sawdust when all of it is warm, maybe in afternoon sunlight. Stir till thoroughly but lightly coated/mixed.

Line a small metal cup, like a ¼ cup stainless measuring cup, with the half size paper cupcake liners, and pack it about half full of the waxed fatwood sawdust, packing it tightly. The wax/Vaseline mix makes the sawdust stick together. Then I put a cotton ball on top, coated lightly with the same mix of Vaseline and paraffin. The paraffin mix is less oily and messy, ignites quickly and burns longer.

Stuff each wafer, a little smaller than a mini-Snickers bar, into a mini ziploc. When a few strands of cotton are teased out, it will light instantly with ferro and steel, match, lighter, etc. and I carry all those, plus a few thin slats of fatwood. (We live in the wet and hunt in real rain forest). The wafer/cookie will burn hot for a minimum of five minutes, and nine minutes is the usual burn time.

I make up a pile of these starter cookies/wafers and give a handful to every family member who hunts or hikes.

Appreciate the knowledge drop gents - especially on the cotton balls. I probably would have made them look like spitwads with jelly and wondered WTF later.

I just like to have the means to make a fire when out tramping the woods or fishing some of the remote places in the UP. Never know when a Sept trip goes south because someone fell in the lake. Happened to me and my dad as a kid and that lesson's stuck with me a long time.

I prefer a Zippo, for several reasons. For 1, liquid fluid will start easily at any temperature or altitude. Then, there's the little thumb lever on a Bic. You have to keep your thumb on it or it goes out. If you need both hands for the tinder or fuel, you can't keep the BIC lit. A Zippo can be lit and set down to free both hands. Fingers frozen? You can light a Zippo by pulling it across your pant leg or something. No fingers are needed. Try that with a BIC.
Zippos do need to be refilled. Mine will dry out after about a week of non-use. I carry a little extra cylinder of fuel that will hold 1 refill. Or, the smallest size can of fluid is quite light weight and will refill it dozens of times if it's full. If it's half full, it will still be enough for a bunch of refills but will weigh a few oz. less.

I have a couple long neck plasma lighters that we use for camps stoves and BBQ's. Those do work great for that and can be recharged from a power pack, solar charger, or about any other source of power. Getting tinder lit with one is a bit more difficult. It'll work but will take more time. Flame works better.