Ultralight fire starter strips

This post describes my tiny ultralight fire starter strips of newspaper and egg carton that are wax soaked and strips of plastic milk bottle that can be used as powerful, waterproof and versatile fire starters.

Introduction.

Over the years I have used a variety of ultralight fire starters and tinder found in the bush (dry bark, lichen, bracken, fine sticks, wood splinters and charcoal etc). However, I have found under difficult cold and wet conditions, a tiny quantity of man-made accelerant can be useful and efficient for starting fires in my ultralight tent stoves, and blower stoves and starting campfires, especially if used in conjunction with the found tinder.

“I will let you into a secret. I have a reputation for being a fire starter amongst my bushwalking friends and I scurry off to find tinder from the bush. However, I often put a tiny piece of my homemade accelerant in the sometimes damp tinder such as old-mans-beard. Upon lighting, I get a good blaze going quickly and my reputation for bushcraft/fire skills soar like the growing flame. When I tell my family about my skulduggery they say you will get found out to be a fake one day!”

Effective accelerants include liquid fuels, commercial white fire starter cubes (Lighter Cubes or Little Lucifer Bbq Accessory Fire Starters), wax-coated corrugated cardboard and rubber from pneumatic tyre inner tubes. “You will see some of these used in my older videos.”

While effective these suffer from various deficiencies:

• excessive volatility/lack of persistence,
• bulky,
• unpleasant odour that is difficult to contain,
• the smell can contaminate a whole backpack and
• the accelerant will lose potency in the process.

Micro ultralight fire starter strips.

Wax has become my favourite starter as it has none of the above deficiencies and has some magical qualities including burning when wet, a tenacious flame and amazing smoke trail ignition properties candle ignited via a smoke trail.

I make thin strips of newspaper and egg carton that are wax-soaked (waxies) and the flame from these naturally burn upwards. I also add tiny strips of plastic milk bottles to my fire starter kit and the flame from these luckily drip downwards like napalm to easily spread an infant fire. I usually ignite the plastic flame drizzler sticks in the flame from the burning waxie.

Some people make relatively bulky fire starters as I did (wax-coated corrugated cardboard). Discarded wax-coated fruit boxes can just simply be cut up with scissors into small strips with no need for wax soaking. Both are still unnecessarily bulky and hold more fuel energy than is needed in many situations.

By contrast, my slim long ultralight fire starters have a variety of thicknesses, widths and burning properties. These properties make my fire starters very cheap, compact, light, efficient and versatile. Many of my fire starter strips can be backpack very efficiently together in one sachet and on extended overnight trekking/packpacking trips. “There is no need to run out of fire starters when so many can easily be carried.”

A little emergency packet of ultralight fire starters and a lighter are constantly carried in the top pocket of my day trip pack as quickly lighting a fire for warmth can be a game-changer for someone who has fallen through a snow bridge into cold water or into a river.

Ultralight fire starter strip length

Their length(~40mm) is useful as they can be poked into places where the flame is critically needed. “Alternatively the waxie ones can also be used as a ‘fuse’ to take the flame to places where fingers and lighters should not go”. I call them ‘waxies’ and I use them in my ultralight tent stoves, blower stoves, campfires, home fires and farm burn-offs.

The little video below is of the re-ignition of the wood gas flame in a tent stove. A tiny ‘newspaper’ ultralight fire starter is all that is needed when itis used as a wick. It keeps the lighter and fingers out of harm’s way.

Preparation of micro fire starter strips

Thin waxies. I cut multiple sheets of newspaper into strips that are about 100 mm wide. Then I roll them up together in a coil and tie a string around the circumference to hold the coil together and form an “extraction handle.” I get an old saucepan from the op-shop (kept for this purpose only) and melt old candles down so that I can flood the paper roll with wax. I lower the coil of paper in and let it become saturated with wax for a few minutes. Using the string, I remove the paper slowly from the wax allowing it to drain back into the pot. Then I quickly put the roll on some more newspaper sheets and quickly peel the layers apart while the wax is still warm. I spread the individual strips out separately to cool on the newspaper. When the strips are cooled I bundle up about ten strips and cut off at intervals of about 20 mm to make the finished waxies.

Thick waxies. These are made in much the same way as the thin waxies, but I cut them as either thick or thin strips from the lids of egg cartons. The range of thicknesses can be used to vary the fuel energy content of the strips. This means that the smallest strip that is appropriate for the task can be selected. It is also interesting to find that thin strips light more easily under difficult conditions and a thick strip that is split into two will hold flame better under windy conditions.

The thick waxies are most suitable for starting my stoves and campfires. However, I carry a higher proportion of the thin waxies because they are quicker to light, much more efficient to carry and only one or two are needed to ignite a smoking fire or keep a frail burn going long enough to become self-sustaining.

The long waxie shape is good for quick lighting and strategic placement relative to the tinder to quickly initiate the burn without burning your fingers (much like  ‘wax tapers or bar-b-q matches do).

Flame drizzle sticks

“I was tempted to call these ‘napalm sticks’. However, when I went back to that sad and famous photo of that poor burnt Vietnamese girl running down the road. Many of us thought that it was the political turning point in the war and I could not use the word Napalm. “So ‘flame drizzle sticks’ it is.”

I make these ‘flame drizzle sticks’, about the same size as the thick waxies, from 2 litres HDPE plastic milk bottles.

In blower stoves, the flame drizzlers can lit by the infant wax flame and the melting flaming plastic can be drizzled over the fuel sticks to rapidly spread the infant flame. “It is a bit like solidified petrol, but much safer and there is no smell.”

In the micro tent stoves, the drizzler can be dropped down the fuel tube into the hot charcoal and a thin waxie can be put up the primary air port and lit up like a fuse for the flame to be pulled in to ignite the HDPE gas. This, in turn, will re-start the j-burner flame as shown in the video below. “There need be no cruelty to gas lighters with these techniques.”

To burn or not to burn plastic

These drizzle sticks will be contentious to many readers as burning plastic is considered environmentally offensive. “I see a look of horror in the eyes of some of my bushwalking friends who see ‘Tim the Greeny’ using a ‘flame drizzle stick’ or equivalent piece of rubbish in my stove for the first time.” However, I explain to them (as a retired chemist) that if the right plastic, in small quantities, is burnt at high enough temperature ( Yellow red ~1,000-1,200C in the table below) and with enough oxygen it is not offensive. waste-plastics-fuel.

Now for those that avoided chemistry in your student days, if the burn is clean enough there will be mainly CO2 and water produced and there will be no significant smell or offence.

Advantages of micro fire starter strips.

A large number of mixed strips can be packed densely into a small flexible container for backpacking on long trips. Their combustion is unimpaired by water. They have a wide range of burn characteristics and persistence and they have no leakage of odour or potency.

They should be transportable as luggage on aeroplane flights, especially, especially if the newspaper ones were called ‘alpine waterproof reading matter’.

The last advantage of waxies is particularly pertinent to blower stoves. The jet of air from the blower tends to easily extinguish the flame on the ‘white fire starter blocks’. In contrast, a wax flame appears to be excited by the air jet and becomes hotter and more aggressive and a little moisture makes it more so. “Just like birthday cake candles do when little kids try to blow them out and they hit the flame with a bit of spit!”

The last word/s

Having extolled the virtues of my micro ultralight fire starter strips, there is one more trick that I use. Under very windy conditions it is very difficult to get or keep the initial flame strip started to light my outdoor blower stoves. Consequently, I use a tissue or piece of paper towel or chux cloth that is smeared with cooking oil and scrunched up into a ball to do the job. It will make an incendiary ball that can be lit in a protected place then taken to the stove that is primed with all the other tinder etc. This is fortunate as the stove kits all carry an oiled chux cloth or paper towel for wiping down the stove body and protecting the nonstick cooking surfaces from scratching during backpacking. Sacrificing a part of this expendable item is a justifiable cause. Luckily, I always carry a little olive oil for cooking anyway.

Tim