Forums

This is a terrific blog post by Nathan Coleman on creating an inexpensive, lightweight fire starting kit

Just stumbled across this post. Any first hand experience by guys that have made these?
Thanks in advance, Bill

They have worked for me in the few times I have tried them. The Vaseline and cotton did not seem to need much of a spark to ignite and burns reasonably long.

Interesting, I gotta try that

Have used these for 2 or 3 years now and am very satisfied with them. One thing I learned was to not get the entire wad of cotton over saturated with vaseline. Doing so seemed to make it difficult to ignite. What works better for me is to saturate about half the cotton with vaseline and leave the other half dry. Works for me!

So how long do they burn on their own?

I've never timed them and can't give you an honest burn time. I can however say that they burn plenty long enough to get the tinder and kindling burning. Does anyone have a more concrete answer?

I just tried a single cotton ball saturated with Vaseline. It burnt for three minutes and ten seconds. A fire straw made from a two inch pixy stick and two cotton balls burned for right at six minutes.

The single cotton ball burned with a consistent flame. The fire straw burnt slow at first then increased to a large flame and ended by returning to a small flame.

Thanks, alann.