Going to be taking kids out this summer and Fall for some backpacking and canoeing into the bush and then backpack hunting this fall

Curious what your simplest, bullet-proof firestarter set up is? Keep in mind, I am planning on working with the kids (11 and 12 yo) in building little kits for them.

Bic lighter

I'm a fan of coating cotton balls heavily with petroleum jelly. You can put a bunch in a ziplock bag to keep it less messy. Pull one out, stretch it out good and put under some small sticks. It'll start fires in most conditions.

Whatever you do, don't rely on our current brands of 'strike nowhere' matches. They won't. Even a little bit of dampness and they won't light at all.

Two of the small bic lighters. One in my pocket & one in my pack. Both in ziplock bags with some 550 cord.

^^^^^ This plus the aforementioned Bic lighters. I also throw in a magnesium firestick as well.

There are lots of good strikers on the market. I have a StrikeForce that's really good but it's not the only one by any means. Every kid needs to learn how to use one.

Bic lighter and lint from the dryer or the aforementioned petroleum jelly soaked cotton balls.There is a never ending supply of lint at my house so we put it to good use.

11 and 12 might be a bit too old for this, but keep a straight face and try to convince them you have been collecting your bellybutton lint.

John

You can try this with the cotton balls and petroleum jelly. Find some fat plastic straws, the fatter the better (I have used the fat straws you can get filled with powdered candy). And you will need some needle nose pliers and a bic lighter.
Cut the straws into pieces about 2.5 inches long. Use the needle nose pliers to pinch one end shut with a bit of the open end showing, then melt it closed with the lighter. Now you have a little cylinder sealed on one end. Stuff it full of the treated cotton balls up to about 1/2 inch from the other end. Then pinch that end shut and melt it sealed.
When you need it just cut the end off and pull out most of the cotton ball, then light the whole thing.
These will last almost forever in your survival kit.

magnesium fire stick, dryer lint, and birch bark. Cotton balls with petroleum jelly also work great, but can be messy, especially with kids.

For an easy to carry in the pack fire starter kit:
Bic lighter, tube of Blistex lip balm (medicated petroleum jelly), and dryer lint or cotton balls, and small magnesium fire stick. Entire thing can fit into a large pill bottle.

I have also used the product Wet Fire, which works great.

That all being said, this is an ingenious idea.

If you have small kids, there's a good chance the lint won't burn. It's treated for fire resistance. Adult lint works fine.

In addition to what's been said, extra fine 0000 steel wool works well when you shower it with sparks from a striker.

Whichever one you use a little practice with it prior to going out is helpful.

The best fire-starter I know of is a road flare. Magnesium chips work well too, but a road flare will burn hot enough and long enough to get a fire going under all but the wettest of conditions.

We sliced up some Fatwood dipped it in paraffin wax and then sprinkled on some old gunpowder this year fot fire starters. It starts right away and keeps burning for a while in damp conditions. Messy process but a fun supervised kid project, I had some old powder to dispose of and this worked fine.

Are we talking about tinder or the item used to start it?

Jordan;
Top of the morning to you sir, it's been too long since I've said hello and I trust this finds you folks well.

Whenever I'm out in the bush I've got a Light My Fire lighter in my left pants pocket along with a wad of 0000 steel wool and cotton balls - both soaked in petroleum jelly and held in two heavy duty plastic bags.

By way of experimenting with that setup, I've been able to soak it for several minutes under water, then shake it off and use it to start a fire.

That said Jordan, in my pack I've got a selection of matches, a mini torch, fatwood and a magnesium bar type fire starter as well.

I always say if anything happens to me in the bush, unless I'm knocked out they'll find me by the huge fire.

All the best to you folks this summer Jordan.

Dwayne

Egg carton, cotton ball, and beeswax.

Cut strips from an old bicycle inner tube. Make sure there is a point at the end of the cut. Add local tinder.

If tinder is needed, dryer lint or some kind of paper.

And, of course, bic lighter

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.

Thanks. I hadn't seen them in my usual surplus stores for awhile and hadn't looked much elsewhere.

The Esbit type fuel tabs wrapped in vaseline soaked cotton balls light easily and burn hot for about 9 minutes. I put a lighter in every pocket of my pack , 1 in my shirt pocket and 1 in my HPG recon.

When my wife and I get stuck w/ a rainy day we use the stuff in our packs to build a fire. In conditions like Okanagen shows it has taken up to an hour to get a real fire going. I keep a 2 ft square piece of aluminum foil as a dry base and put up a quicky tarp 1st.

Keep a chem handwarmer w/ your kit so you don't fumble the critical actions.

I use yellow dishwashing gloves in my aid kit instead of disposable.These help keep your hands dry and somewhat warm while collecting and prepping your wood.


I find firestarting skills to be perishable as well as essential.



mike r

NAILED IT!

Bicycle inner tube cut in thin strips, wrapped around a Bic lighter works wonders. weighs nothing, Burns GREAT.

Less messy than others and super easy to deal with.

Where is whamblasted when we need good advice on fire?

Now that you said that, I do believe that was suggested in one of our courses years ago... I had forgotten that. As hard as rubber/tires are to put out once on fire, makes total sense.

Will make that mental note to try to find some bike tubes, even if I have to go buy a few new ones, and stuff in the packs...

If I had some old gunpowder around I'd do your acetone thing, but the little I had we experimented by mixing it into the fatwood sawdust.

Eventually you'll have some, at least I always do find a can partially gone that I don't want to use for anything anymore.

But I bet its just fine in the fatwood.

A couple of pages from an old phone book make for great tinder. Keep it dry in a ZipLok bag. Roll them up to form something like a wand and place them burning under the natural tinder and kindling that you have gathered from the area. Works great.

KC

Someone gave me some old blackpowder.

I put it in some old prescription bottles, in a ziplock bag, with a bic lighter, that has the strips of bicycle tube wrapped around it. Add some tinder, and it is as close to foolproof as a person can get.

I have a few of the flint and steel type tools as shown, but while fun to play with, when I am cold, and my fingers are numb, like on a December elk hunt, I just grab the bic and start a fire.

blackpowder is safe to light with a bic? I"ve heard varying stories...

The last case of that I have is circa 1964 dupont and its still in fine shape and not sure thats what I'd want to carry, but it would be nice to know its safe.

Not sure where I heard or if its true, that it can boom instead of burn.

Rost,

Much like most things, common sense and moderation helps. A small amount sprinkled out, and then some dry grass/tinder on top works like a charm.

If you pull a Butch Cassidy....

Fresh 9-volt battery
0000 steel wool

Wrap the steel wool over the connectors when you want it to light, and in about a minute the entire thing will be glowing red hot with sparks.


Also, a good "woods skill" to teach kids is that the best firestarting equipment is always available anytime you have an engine around, either get something soaked in gasoline/diesel, or at least some oil.

Along with that, the kids...and adults...need some serious training on how to safely get the gas out of the truck and light it without setting off an inferno. Diesel's a lot safer if you have it.

'

I was leaning to the fact of thin/small use might be fine.

Thanks for verification. I've never tried to light black with a lighter, due to old warnings and such...

I don't want this to sound like I'm the only dude who's ever almost died but having sorta recently broken through lake ice while backcountry skiing I learned that the cutesy fire starting methods won't work when you actually need a fire right now, and space blankets take forever to unroll when your flesh is freezing and are useless in the wind. I've switched to road flares and the SOL bivy sacks.

Sounds like you're in the same school as the guy in Jack London's 'To Build a Fire'.

There's a difference between practicing the art and not dying. I understand the lightweight game and have been sewing my own gear since before Ray Jardines ideas became mainstream. But if everything you need to live is in an Altoids tin, you probably won't. An ounce here and there is ok in the right places.

Like you, I start a fire the quickest way unless practicing with more minimal gear-- or unless my hands are so cold they are losing dexterity.

More than once my hands have been too cold to flick a Bic type lighter using the normal motion. Don't know if that has happened to anyone else. Only once were they so cold I couldn't get the lighter to light by using two hands. If my hands are really cold, I prefer the ferrocerium rod and steel. The flint and steel can be gripped by larger hand muscles that still function after fingers have lost dexterity in the cold.

With a little practice it is virtually as quick to light a greased cotton ball as it is to light it with a lighter. Also, in extreme cold, lighters don't work unless they have been kept warm by body heat inside clothes, and then you have one to three or four tries before having to warm it again. I don't have exact numbers but my experience would say cold below -15 F.

Photo below was well after dark in the Canadian Rockies in late November, -15F or colder. Fingers cracked so painfully in the dry cold that I could not run a zipper. But CDN Rockies are an easy place to start a fire compared to rain forest.

Extreme cold is exactly what makes BIC lighters a non-primary source of emergency fire.

As for the strips of inner tubes, a simpler method is to just get a big package of rubber bands from an office supply store. Wrap them around something in your kit and you have tinder.

And from a guy who was an Air Force survival instructor, a SAR consultant and went on to start his own company teaching survival (40+ years experience), the only truly waterproof matches are the ones sold by REI.

I camp/hike with a portable woodstove and have discovered that alcohol-based hand sanitizer gels like Purel work great. You squirt it on the wood and then put in the stove and woomph. Off it goes.

It is not something you'd bring along just in case you need to light a fire, but it does have other uses. I personally think a hand sanitizer is more important for preventing giardia than using a water filter - but that's just me (1 in 8 people is carrying giardia).

And hand sanitizer really does a good job with getting the stove going - so why not carry it?

Patrick

Tag

Hexamine fuel tabs (by Esbit or Coglan's available from Amazon. You can get the small ones (.02) oz. Squeeze a little Purell hand sanitizer on them and hit them with a striker on a magnesium rod and they light first time, every time and burn hot. The larger tabs will burn for 9 minutes (as another poster above noted). Hexamine has a shelf life of about forever. Put the Purell in a 1 oz. squeeze bottle and it will have a shelf life of damn near forever too and the 1 oz bottle will accelerate the lighting of dozens of Hexamine tabs.

Road flares are by far the best fail proof that I"ve seen. If they made em in 5-10 minute models, or what I'm thinking of as about half the normal size, and you could carry 2-3.. you should easily start a fire no matter how tough life got.

The foil blankets....nope... we do carry the tarp types though... but we always carry a 30 degree bag and bivy just in case anyway. And have been moving away from the tarp type blankets to a silnylon 8x8 tarp for rain showers and glassing cover etc.. double duty as a wind block and so on. But then I'm anal, and we have a pocket rocket and some instant tea/oatmeal most of the time too....

I also carry a ZIPPO. By putting a "ranger" band around the body opening, it makes it water tight and the fuel will last a long, long time. Here is a post I made in another thread aboout the same subject with a picture of my ZIPPO with the rubber band around the opening.

I've found over the years the ZIPPO is very easy to fire up when my hands are so cold I can barely move my fingers. Beats hell out of any Bic I ever saw.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/8780980/Searchpage/1/Main/616131/Words/Zippo/Search/true/Re:_Zippo_lighters#Post8780980

Works for me.

L.W.

Orion makes both 5 and 10 minute flares. I don't know where to buy them in packS of less than 144, though. ORION 5 MIN FLARES

While searching for them, I found out that flares in large quantities are getting harder to find because they use them to make meth.

Walmart carries 3 min signal flares. I don't know how they compare to road flares for fire starting. They're pricey, though, at $28 per 4-pack
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Orion-Locate-4-Handheld/16326929

Gander Mtn has a 2-pack for $10. http://www.gandermountain.com/modperl/product/details.cgi?i=851243

are signal flares aerial?

Be carefull of Bic lighters in the cold at high elevation. My experience is that they fail every time.

Bics are filled with butane, aren't they? Butane doesn't do well at high altitudes or in the cold. It needs to change to a gas to burn in a lighter or stove and it's boiling point is slightly below the freezing point of water, about 30F. In the cold it's hard to get it to change to a gas.

I wish I knew that about Bic lighters when I lived in Colorado and climbed fourteeners regularly, some in the winter in well below the freezing point of water (and skin, and lots of other things). All kidding aside, they work fine at high altitude in the cold, you just have to keep them in an inside pocket. We used to put half a bottle of warm water in one boot, and the stove fuel and lighters in the other boot, then put the boots in a sleeping bag stuff sack, then put the works in the bottom of the sleeping bag for the night. I still buy long sleeping bags to this day.

Oh, and back to the original topic - we used to walk the train tracks near crossings and pick up the dud and half burnt railroad flares. Cut them off in 2" pieces and dunk in hot paraffin a couple times. Had to take a knife and use the point to loosen up the wax and powder on one end before lighting, but worked well and gave about 5 minutes burn time. Could probably do the same with store bought road flares.

In that case, they're not in the cold. Leave them in a cold pack, though, and it's another story. Then you need a Zippo.
As far as altitude goes, those butane bbq strikers usually fail somewhere around 5 to 6000'. The ones in our camper never work in the mtns and I've tried about every brand.

I know you know the first rule of fire starters - have two and keep them on you at all times, so pulling one out of a pocket is more realistic than fishing around in a backpack for a cold one isn't it?

Your luck with butane lighters sucks. I've used the same butane bbq striker in our popup for years, usually in 7000 to 8000 feet range, down to 15 degrees at night, and never not had hot coffee first thing in the morning. I had to get a new one this year, and was feeling adventurous, so I bought a different brand. Damn if it didn't work too. You know there's a little sparky thingy on butane lighters that you have to work with your thumb or finger, right?

This is why I use piezoelectric lighters whenever I can get them.

Trioxane bars.

I carry 2 or 3, and that would enable me to start fires for a couple weeks. All for the grand total of less than one dollar. And they weigh next to nothing.

Bic and cotton balls with Vaseline or wax in a pill bottle.