Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Pull pin fire starter

Pretty cool and unique homemade fire starter I thought

Wonder how long before that is combined with lpg and oxygen in a basement.

Cool, but watch when he first lights if. There a few seconds at that time were if you cough it would blow them out. GWPGUY. 🐾👣🇨🇦

Too many steps for me. My favorite homemade firestarters are wine corks soaked in Heet. But I'm lazy

What about a propane torch?

I am rather fond of a jerry of diesel for emergencies.

Vasoline works like candle wax in that it doesn't burn as a solid or liquid. It has to vaporize to burn. It takes a little time for the vasoline to melt and vaporize before it starts cooking.

That said, I don't see any advantage of these over simple vasoline soaked cotton balls. I can make a large ziplock bag of those in a few minutes and they'll last for years. The jumbo sized balls sold at Walmart will burn a long time.

I suppose the advantage is that with cold, numb hands, you don’t have to fiddle with a lighter or striker for ignition. Just grab and pull.

But I agree that, while pretty neat, this version is overly complicated to make.

Cardboard egg cartons filled with wood shavings then filled with melted paraffin burn at least that long and will be durable for use years later. These things look like they'd come apart after a single season jostling around in your pack.

Not to be rude, but this looks like something invented by a man who spends alot of time thinking about being outdoors rather than actually getting out there.

I'd not want to trust my life to the integrity of fire starters made from kids' water balloon made in China.

Edit to add pic of fire starter: Here's what I like living in one of the wettest places in North America, two egg carton starters with a lighter, vacuum sealed.

I am not looking forward to the time when I HAVE to start a fire in an emergency situation especially in Oct/Nov.

Been easy to stay hydrated. Hint.(grin)




Just sayin'...............

Jordan;
Good morning my friend, I see your light is on and hope that the fall has been good to you and your fine family.

For sure as you noted, it's an interesting take on problem solving but perhaps a tad to complicated for my taste as well.

The sticky wicket of course is to do our best to get the fire going before we really and truly NEED to is it not?

While I believe I've told this one before, hopefully I can be forgiven if I repeat it.

As you and many here know, I've taught the BC Hunter Safety course for 35 years now. One of the sections I've taught is Survival and First Aid - while I'm able to teach the entire curriculum, we like to have multiple instructors as it breaks up the class time - 12 hours usually - and gives the students a better cross section of personal experiences.

After one evening's class on Survival and First Aid, one of the student's fathers came up and privately related this example of a very near miss.

He and another fellow were over in the Kootenays goat hunting where he'd knocked down a billy and they were making their way back to the truck loaded with the boned out meat, hide, cape and head.

For reasons that aren't coming to me this morning they deviated over into another drainage instead of going down the way they'd come up, I want to say chasing another billy but regardless they ended up in a position where they had to cross a new to them creek on the way down.

Of course said creek ended up deeper than they thought it was and both got soaked up to mid chest level, but since they agreed the truck was fairly close, they'd keep going instead of making a fire right there and drying out.

Fairly quickly the one fellow became increasingly incoherent and required his hunting partner to steer him down the mountain.

By the time they reached the pickup, buddy was "talking nonsense" as the story teller related, but as he put it, "Thank God he wasn't combative and was listening to me for the most part".

He then told me that he couldn't remember how many times he'd dropped the truck keys in the snow as his hands weren't really responding properly any longer, that he'd two fisted the key, got it into the truck lock finally and then again after multiple attempts got it into the ignition.

They had sleeping bags and blankets in the pickup, so he wrapped buddy in them, turned the heater up to 11 and they sat in the running truck for what he termed "what seemed like forever" until he thought he could safely drive away.

Anyways Jordan, these were two young tough fellows who were and one still is extremely savvy in the BC wilderness, but it still happened to them. The other chap passed a couple years back from terminal cancer.

The take away for me and the story teller was to start that fire and dry out before one started losing one's ability to problem solve or successfully reason. He said the difference between their reactions to the cold/hypothermia was educational for him to say the least.

Hopefully that was useful for someone out there who like you and I are often very far from help and on our own in the wild places.

All the best and good hunting.

Dwayne

A good friend is a retired 10yr+ SERE Instructor and these things often come up. Hint.

In these parts,you could have 5gal of Jet A and 3 Road Flares...and still wake up wet and fhuqking COLD. Hint.(grin)

Just sayin'.............

Correct Calvin. You go through some areas around here where you just wouldn't be able to build a fire if your life depended on it. Often as I hike or hunt I find myself making note of good stuff like the dry side or underside of a dead tree, or a downed cedar. Those things are golden opportunities. When my son was 14 we went back east for deer season on the old place and he was amazed at how easy it was to build fires. He still considers the entire state of Pennsylvania to be a tinderbox.

Nothing homemade and pocket-size I've ever tried could match big chunks of bicycle innertube, ignited with a Bic from a warm interior pocket, or a stormproof match.

Fill a pocket or sandwich bag with clothes dryer lint
Weighs zip and lights every time.

Thanks for the anecdote, Dwayne. An excellent example of the importance of being able to light a fire, even with numb hands.

I hope all is well!

Unless it is from children’s clothing with fire retardant in the material.

What a lot of beginners miss is to gather enough wood for an inferno and a big pile of kindling BEFORE you light it up. You don't want to have to leave a small fire to go find more wood. They go out too easy. Light it once and keep it lit.