I present another episode of 'Survival Tips from IITF'.
In this case, fire starting. Something that'll store well, light easily and burn long enough to get damp small kindling started. Get yourself the following items:
Cotton balls(COTTON, no synthetics)
Petroleum jelly
Take a cotton ball. Get a good blob of jelly in a finger, smoosh it into the cotton ball and work it in. Get another ball and repeat.
That's it. Especially after it's sat a while, just touch a match to it and it's off. Matter of fact, know those fire starters you scrape with something sharp and they throw a shower of sparks? Those will ignite them, too. They burn smoky, but long enough to get small kindling started. And you can put a bunch of them in a baggie to store in the pack/toolbox/whatever. Few years back daughter was going on a campout with some friends and made up a few to take along, just in case. It rained- a lot- that weekend, and she said the only way they could get a fire going was with these.
I'll throw in that a while back I bought a package of those round cotton makeup-remover pads at the dollar store and tried this with them; wiped the jelly into the fuzzy side and folded it in half. Opened up, the sparker lit one right off.
Yes, I know some of you already know this, but SOMEBODY out there doesn't.
Added: Thanks to Bob, a very good idea: fire straws
5 comments:
I saw a similar use of cotton balls and petroleum jelly at Knives Ship Free, but with plastic straws used for long-term storage of the prepared cotton in a very compact package.
Hand Sanitizer also works well for the same purpose and is multi-purpose.
I tend to just use a tealight and a lighter.
Put tealight under wood, light, wait.
(But, this is for camping, not "survival", where the extra size isn't even an issue...
I've also gone the other direction, starting with flint and steel, charcloth, tow fiber. But that's a giant pain in the ass.)
I have no idea how much cotton I've turned into charcloth for flint & steel sets. Or how many yards of garage door spring I've turned into strikers.
Getcherself a couple of wax firelogs, the el-cheapo knockoffs of the "good" ones are great. Pinch off walnut sized chunks and roll 'em into balls. Pack the balls four or five at a time in heavy duty ziplock freezer bags, including a Bic in each one. Now you have a very water resistant fire starter, and fire source in one place. I have these things in myriad places in my 5th wheel, pickup, camper van, my Mountain Man Gear, (I detest trying to start a fire with flint and steel in the rain so I can have coffee in the morning.) the wife's car and most drawers in the house. I suppose if I searched, I'd come up with fifty or sixty in all.
WV: mevally, not youvally, so keep on movin'.
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