Starting a fire

[Bird1050]

As an ex squadie i found the best thing to use are tampax or equivalent as they are
1 in a waterproof plastic wraper
2 they will give off a lot of heat
3 easy to use
4 burn clean

Simple open tampax use a knife and slice it length ways light using iether a striker or windproof matches
the put kindling on top and hey presto fire

[tom2tom]

Maybe you are over thinking this why not just carry some fire starters instead =)?

[pseudonym]

Maybe you are over thinking this why not just carry some fire starters instead =)?

Two is one and one is none.....

When the firelighters run out, you'll need a back up and a back up to your back up.... etc

[tom2tom]

^ True =P

[Jon G]

You can buy a bag of 100 cotton wool balls and a tub of petroleum jelly in a pound shop (even tesco i think) for £2ish. Rain/shine/blowing a gale, I've never failed to get a fire going with a firesteel and cotton ball rubbed with p'jelly!

[Manclife]

I buy the flat cotton pads that's usually used for removing make up, pull the pad apart so you now have 2 slim pads, put a blob of Vaseline in the middle and squish back together. They're not greasy (as its all on the inside) and I can get a huge bag of the pads and a massive tub of petroleum jelly very cheap at most £1 stores. I store them in a plastic change bag.

You just have to remember to fray the edge to make it fluffy and easier to light. They burn for a good few mids too in quite windy conditions.

[gcp1975]

Hi all.. iv'e just started prepping and so far i think i have come up with some great ideas,, AND ITS FREE . after christmas we seem to have a great deal of choccy tins slowly becoming empty (quality st , celebrations etc) not only the metal ones make excellent platforms to burn candles on or convert into ovens they are also have a quite a good seal on them to store things in ( cheap faraday cage perhaps ?) ..now if you have a tumble dryer (not condensing) the fluff from the filter makes a brilliant alternative to cotton wool to start fires with and so far i have filled one tin to the brim of this fluff enabling cotton wool to be used as was intended ... hope this helps !!

[Pointboy]

Thanks Daylen, thats a good point, about the density of the material ... when I *am* up to experimenting, I'll make a note of it.

I saw on one of bear grills episodes that he made like a cloth charcoal. Literally he just put some old cloth in a tin and sealed it up the. Put it in a fire and it doesn't burn the cloth but I guess turns it into a cloth charcoal which is very easy to light. You just do the same as when you are making charcoal but instead of wood it is cloth

[Pointboy]

If you want to use your existing scrap/ rags lookup "making charcloth" on the interwebz. It needs to be natural fiber (cotton/linen) and not synthetic material, but it makes a great firelighting material.

Damn you beat me too it. Just saw that you posted that hah a

[Briggs 2.0]

I thought I'd give this excellent thread a little bump.

I've been on the look out all summer for some more dry tinder fungus. This type is called cramp ball fungus and it looks a lot like smooth black horse dung stuck to the side of trees, predominately Ash. Open it up and it has a dark brown inner with concentric circles that take a spark well.

I thought I'd try and take a short vid to show how combustible it is. If starting fires with no matches or lighters is your thing then there are much better videos than mine on youtube that are worth checking out. I'll try and take a more professional video when I've got a camera stand or assistant!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/859 ... Fungus.wmv