If you fly into the departure point for your remote hunt it might be hard to carry a "proper" firestarter.

Here is a thought [it works I have used it a lot].

Take a bunch of Birchwood Casey Sheath Individual package gun wipes.

They are great for wiping down your gun at the end of the day, and they burn real good, ie they are great for starting a fire in camp.

AND I have never had any problems getting a bunch of them on the plane.

Waterproof 'lifeboat' matches and a small piece of bicycle inner tube or some of the emergency tinder that strike force(?) were selling, plus the old trusty flint and steel.

I usually just store it in with the rifle. It's in checked baggage anyway. Never any hassles with airlines or security.

Something else that works great, but might be hard to find is the stripper clips on Canadian 5.56 Military ammo.

They are "plastic", and designed to be burned and used as fuel for cooking "food".

As they are "inert" I have not had any trouble getting them "on the plane".

They have no shelf life, they last forever.

quote:

Originally posted by Sambar 9.3:
Waterproof 'lifeboat' matches and a small piece of bicycle inner tube or some of the emergency tinder that strike force(?) were selling, plus the old trusty flint and steel.

I usually just store it in with the rifle. It's in checked baggage anyway. Never any hassles with airlines or security.

Dave, I just checked on some "lifeboat matches" that I never used. They worked after about 30 years in storage.

Just bought a Blastmatch and some Wetfire.....looks purdy dang good on the video.....we'll see.

I always take along an old pill bottle stuffed with cotton balls wiped in vasaline. They'll burn 2-3 minutes and make great tinder.

quote:

Originally posted by Omnivorous_Bob:
I always take along an old pill bottle stuffed with cotton balls wiped in vasaline. They'll burn 2-3 minutes and make great tinder.

As will dryer lint with vaseline in old 35mm celluloid film cannisters.

trioxane fuel bars are the best. esbit works pretty good too. i stop and have a cup of coffee every day on the trail and use fuel tabs to heat my water. if you want to make real emergency matches an old trick is to make a block of wax with the matches in it. cut off a match if you need one or you can strike the whole block for a small fire of its own.

flint & steel with a bit of char cloth has worked for me in the back country (most of Idaho is back country) since the late seventies.

Rich

While traditional Flint & Steel do in fact work and worked for many years, if you NEED a fire one of the various Ferro-Cerium fire starters (like a "Blast match" )work a wholelot better.

There is more to making proper char cloth than most people are willing to learn.
LET ALONE using flint to strike sparks off of a piece of high carbon steel.... which requires a technique that again, most people aren't willing to learn.

Recent rues changes allow carrying of a Zippo lighter on your person but if you meet ignorant screeners...
Zippo makes a TSA approved container that you can put in your checked bags that carries TWO zippo lighters.
Plus a small specially (Sold seperatly) made refillable fuel container (about the size of a finger) that will refuel two lighters

Frankly I don't walk away from this computer desk without a zippo lighter and I don't even smoke... (never have)

I am rarely without atleast three knives and two or more means of starting a fire even going to the local 7-11 equivelent, actually going into the "wild"?

Backpacking? Carrying a liquid fueled stove (I prefer gasoline fired stoves because you can set nearly
anything on fire with a teaspoon of coleman fuel.)
Like a small Coleman "peak 1" stove (or a Military M-1950)
and the storage container for the stove IS a boiling/cooking container.

a Blast match should be in your pack as should a spare sheath knife preferably identical to whatever you carry on your belt. (Knives can get lost)

Steel wool (if you can keep it dry) can be effective tinder


You'd be amazed what you can fit into a few small "altoids" tins when you aren't even carrying a pack, more than one of those tinsis in one of the pockets of every jacket I own.

the round tins for Altoids sour candies seal fairly well but can be sealed even better by wrapping the seam with electrical tape.

PLUS you can identify the contents by using different color tape.
I use Red to indicate a fire starting kit.
Green for first aid stuff
(Bandaids, Aspirin, Vaseline lip balm needles already threaded, a bottle of Oragel (contact anestetic which
can be used for more than teeth)
and I remove the factory cellophane seal from actual sour
candies with reseal them with clear tape that seals better so the candies don't all stick together.

Christ on a crutch, I watch that Bear Gryls survival show and laugh about how much time he spends making stuff That I have at my fingertips 24/7/365.

"Be Prepaired" isn't just a cute saying.

quote:

Originally posted by ray porter:
trioxane fuel bars are the best. esbit works pretty good too. i stop and have a cup of coffee every day on the trail and use fuel tabs to heat my water. if you want to make real emergency matches an old trick is to make a block of wax with the matches in it. cut off a match if you need one or you can strike the whole block for a small fire of its own.

Ray

I have used the Esbit "bars" and the Esbit "stove" quite a bit.

They work great. I have done a several 3 to 5 day "Very Ultra Light" trips where the Esbit "system" was all I used for cooking.

It works perfect.

Tthe Swedish firesteel is really quite good and doesn't seem to be too interesting to the airlines. There is a compnay in montana that makes a similar tool, I can;t remember the name. It works okay on its own, but with dryer lint/cotton balls in vaseline it works great. Takes two hands, but I don't like any of the one handed things anyway. Campmor has them in several sizes.

-phil

quote:

Originally posted by Norton:
Just bought a Blastmatch and some Wetfire.....looks purdy dang good on the video.....we'll see.

Hey, Norton. How did this work out for you?

Give us a report, please.

Practice in fire starting is the best. As a boy scout we drilled it in every possible and impossible situation and sometimes it was on the edge of human abuse For instance the scout team gets a piece of a log and three matches and the goal is to bring one liter of water to boiling - typically done in a rain.

Also the years of smoking taught me a lot about striking match and protecting the flame from the wind.

Birch bark is the greatest thing for firestarting if you indeed have it in your area. It will burn no matter what.

For emergency fire starting, I always carry a small zip lock bag with strips of bicycle inner tube. It's cut into strips about 3/8 - 1/2" wide & about 3-4" long. This stuff is easy to light and will start a fire in any weather. Put several strips on some small pieces of wood/tinder, then a few larger pieces on top of the strips. Light it off - that's it.
Just what I do. Bear in Fairbanks

This subject comes up every so often every hunting season, and it is after all a potentailly life saving aspect of hunting in remote or sparcely populated areas we often prefer to hunt in.

I finaly came to the conclusion I should try out what I chose to carry in my survival pack to start fires with. After much resurch I chose US military Trioxain bars issued to our troops for use in food preporation. They come in indavidually packed air tight foil containors like a small flat candy bar. They weigh almost nothing.
Trioxain bars are 100% water proof and will actually once lit float in water and still burn. They also start extreamly easy with eithor a match or any type of sparking device like my Gerber Strikeforce.

I chose the Trioxain bars over the cubes sold by Gerber because the Trioxain bars are much larger and will burn far longer allowing me my best chance to get a fire going. I also ruled out the much recommended cloths dryer lint and vasoline mix as being to messy and could ooze out in my pack as well as no where as easy to work with or as simple to reseal and reuse as Trioxain bars are.
I also carry one containor of Brittish Navy life boat matches that come packed in a bomb proof water tight reusable/resealable containor compleat with water proof striker inside the cap.

But I wnated to know how well they as well as myself and all my fire starting equipment would work in a simulated worce case situation.

So I waited for a winter night of freezing rain and snow with high winds to go outside in the forrest near my home and try to start and maintain a fire with nothing more than my fire starting gear and only the fuel to be found in the woods I was in.

Everything worked perfectly and I was able to easly get a fire started and keep it going. I was surprised just how much dry wood I could find if I used common sence and looked in the right places. Pine cones still on the tree burned especially well as did any dead/dry pine tree limbs I could find. As a matter of fact most any free standing dead limbs were dry enough to burn well. I also learned that a large stand of pine trees contains a lot of so called pine tree "litter" under the pine trees made up of small limbs and needles that if you dig down a ways past the rain on surface litter you will find nice dry fuel for your fire, especially usefull in getting a fire started.

I have always said the best way to prepair for and insure you will have the confidence to indure a unexpected night outdoors in the woods or mountains while hunting deer or elk, is to actually spend the night out in the woods using nothing more than what is normaly in your packs survival kit to do so. I did this a few times in the woods I deer hunt so as to be with in easy walking distance of my truck. Then once I was comfortable doing so in cold but good weather I gave it a try in cold wet rainy weather.
Let me tell you it was quite the eye opener.

I can not strongly recommend anyone who hunts in even slightly remote areas let alone the mountains should practice this untill you are confident in your abilities to get through spending a unexpected night or two out in the woods. It most likely could wind up saving your life one day.

Will they let Trioxain bars on a commercial airliner? I agree that they are good(look like big blue flat aspirin) but I am not sure airlines will let them on.

i am quite unimpressed with fancy lighters, especially in the cold. The military firestarters work well and again don't seem to attract the attention lighters and matches do.

i have had trioxane conficated by the tsa. twice- and you wont know if they got it till you arrive. the last time i took esbit [ or hexamine ] tabs and just put them in a ziplock out in the open. they looked like giant aspirin or salt pills and were left alone and intact.

i have used cotton balls on one trip where the triox was conficated and it was less that ideal. after 8 days of rain where there is nothing but wet willow and alder to burn you will struggle to get a flame.

go practice with what ever you choose. otherwise you are only guessing.

Anyone try a Fire Piston? They look neat, tidy and easy to have at hand. But I have only seen video.

I'm a fire steel guy. I can light my Pocket Rocket and all my other camp stoves much easier and safer with sparks than a match.

Even if I had one of the new piezzo ignition stoves, I would still carry the fire steel in case the piezzo went teets up.

JUMBO sized Cotton Balls (100% cotton) impregnated with Petroleum Jelly as a few other folks have advised.

Be sure NOT TO USE the synthetic balls.

Work plenty of Petro. jelly into each ball.

* Just before using, BE SURE TO pull some wispy cotton fibers away from the cotton soaked petro ball as the wispy ends act as the wicks and the P. jelly is the fuel. Our survival students sometimes make the mistake of just plopping em' into their tinder as a glob and if a few fibers aren't pulled away, they are harder to get going.

Place as many cotton balls as possible into an empty pill bottle.

Also recommend you carry a "metal match"/ sparker.
I carry a fire-steel brand and replace the factory scraper with a
2 1/2" - 3" snapped off piece of carbon hack-saw blade for better sparks.

If you opt to carry matches. REI brand stormproof matches are by far the best. We demo light em' off for our students then submerse them into a cup of water, the little buggers re-ignite every time. We have tested many other "waterproof / stormproof" matches with this test and all but the REI's fail to re-light after submersion.

Carry these matches in a 2nd pill bottle along with a spare match strikers (the REI's come with 2 spares plus the 2 on the box) and invert the petro-ball bottle next to the match pill bottle and use some bright colored duct tape and tape the 2 bottles together and there's your fire-start kit.

Fritos, burn even when wet.

Is it possible to get "strike anywhere" matches today .... or are they extinct?

What I don't understand, why would you want to start your camp fire with plastic and rubber and such? One thing is a trash burning fire, but my cooking fire I prefer clean - and if you can't start it without some dirty shit, you better stay home.

quote:

Originally posted by p.e. n' sitka:
JUMBO sized Cotton Balls (100% cotton) impregnated with Petroleum Jelly as a few other folks have advised.

Be sure NOT TO USE the synthetic balls.

Work plenty of Petro. jelly into each ball.

This sounds like Peter Kummerfeldt's system, which I love. (I took a class from him a couple of months ago.)

We took each cotton ball and stretched it way out, pulling it into as thin and wispy a thing as we reasonably could. Then gobed in the petroleum jelly and smushed the fibers around until the cotton was a gooey mess, reforming it into a compressed ball. (I've found each one will burn for over 5 minutes.)

Repeat with other cotton balls until you have as many as you think you'll want, and store them in the pill container.

quote:

* Just before using, BE SURE TO pull some wispy cotton fibers away from the cotton soaked petro ball as the wispy ends act as the wicks and the P. jelly is the fuel. Our survival students sometimes make the mistake of just plopping em' into their tinder as a glob and if a few fibers aren't pulled away, they are harder to get going.

Absolutely true. To prepare for ignition, we simply take a ball and pull it until it separates into two halves. This leaves two gobs of petroleum-impregnated cotton, each with long wispy fibers. You then re-assemble the gobs, compressing the non-wispy fiber parts together taking care to leave the wispy fibers . . . well . . . wispy. Then, place it on a piece of wood with the wispy fibers pointing up (it looks something like a cotton ball with Don King's hair).

quote:

Place as many cotton balls as possible into an empty pill bottle.

Also recommend you carry a "metal match"/ sparker.
I carry a fire-steel brand and replace the factory scraper with a
2 1/2" - 3" snapped off piece of carbon hack-saw blade for better sparks. . . .

Ditto. This is exactly the way I learned to do things. The metal match method of igniting these things is as easy as it could be, and for my money, makes matches unnecessary: a couple of sparks from the metal match is all you need to start a mini-inferno (I ignited my cotton ball with a single scrape of the metal match).

Just FWIW — Kummerfeldt showed us how to use a pruning saw to cut a small branch, perhaps 3 inches in diameter and 6 — 8 inches long. Then, use a knife and whack it with a wooden baton (another branch, cut for the purpose) to split it into 3 — 4 pieces, which you lay edge to edge with the flat sides up (this gets your fire off the ground).

Then, you lay another short branch (1 inch X 4 - 6 inches) across the windward end of the platform. You take twigs from trees and strip the bark from them with a knife blade (the drier the twigs, the better, but even green ones will work). You then place a cotton ball on the platform near the cross piece, ignite it (the ball). Once it's a-blazing, you lay those barkless twigs across the flame, propping them on the cross-wise piece. This allows the fire to breathe. (You can help it breath more by lifting one end of the cross-wise piece.) You add wood as necessary.

Kummerfeldt's system works in the worst weather . . . our tinder was absolutely soaked, but once we scraped the bark off, it was dry enough to burn.

(Kummerfeldt's quick and dirty way to rig a tarp for a shelter is likewise an invaluable yet simple skill to master.)

Just FWIW.

BL,
Yep. Retired AF Survival School (late 90's), Local SE Alaska Survival Guru Course (05) and Peters course in (07).

All Kummerfeldt. He and his team at ERI put on the best of the 3 courses i've attended.

p.e. in Kodiak

quote:

Originally posted by DaMan:
Is it possible to get "strike anywhere" matches today .... or are they extinct?

Easy to get where I'm at, but the quality has gone way down over the years.

quote:

Originally posted by Czech_Made:
What I don't understand, why would you want to start your camp fire with plastic and rubber and such? One thing is a trash burning fire, but my cooking fire I prefer clean - and if you can't start it without some dirty shit, you better stay home.

In an emergency situation, the last thing I'd be worrying about would be starting a fire with "some dirty shit". Besides, the dirty shit burns off anyway.

p.e. n' sitka

I thought I detected some Peter-influence. He's awfully good, and I highly recommend his classes to anyone who's interested in survival techniques and equipment.

I'm blessed: a close personal friend is a survival guru here in Southern Oregon. He's an excellent teacher and has done tests galore on all kinds of stuff, so he really knows what he's talking about. He teaches our Search and Rescue people survival techniques.

Jim really likes durable matches, and lights them with a Ronson Comet lighter. Less messy than cotton balls, and the lighter doesn't require the nimble fingers of the Bics and other such devices.

I still like the cotton balls and metal match approach, but each to his own.

Brian

Ordinary matches and ordinary plastic bag. Also, I never have to go far after birch bark in my area. Pick a little here and there in another ordinary plastic bag. Put juniper over it, and pine branches on top, and you have fire. In an area with only wet willow and alder, though, I would have died from hypothermia.

a good lighter zippo works great

My favorite is drier lint soaked in white camp gas. I keep it in a little aluminum can (mil surp). That stuff starts anytime, anywhere and a pinch burns for a few minutes. Undoubtedly not suited for airline travel however!

Several folks (my friend, guru-Jim included) suggest using a lighter to ignite "whatever."

The problem with lighters is that they require manual dexterity, which is compromised when you (and especially your fingers) are cold.

It is for this reason that I much prefer a metal match, with which I can shower sparks onto a highly flammable vaseline-impregnated cotton ball (or trioxane, for those who prefer it).

Just my personal opinion.

quote:

Originally posted by craigster:

quote:

Originally posted by Czech_Made:
What I don't understand, why would you want to start your camp fire with plastic and rubber and such? One thing is a trash burning fire, but my cooking fire I prefer clean - and if you can't start it without some dirty shit, you better stay home.

In an emergency situation, the last thing I'd be worrying about would be starting a fire with "some dirty shit". Besides, the dirty shit burns off anyway.

I don't think majority people here talk about emergency situations. And it is only practice in every situation that makes you master of fire starting. American's approach to fire, the way I experienced it, is nothing I approve - very far from woodcraft we teach overseas.

I have used kitchen Wax Paper for 45 years. It folds up fitting in any pocket, no mess and burns like gasoline. No TSA agent will be taking that away from you or not allowing it on a plane. It's great stuff.

Great idea dukx, I will try it asap.

quote:

Originally posted by dukxdog:
I have used kitchen Wax Paper for 45 years. It folds up fitting in any pocket, no mess and burns like gasoline. No TSA agent will be taking that away from you or not allowing it on a plane. It's great stuff.

How did you ignite your wax paper? Did you use a metal match?

I really like the idea, but when I tried to ignite the wax paper with a metal match, I couldn't do so.

I tried it both crumpled up and lying flat, to no avail: sparks that would have ignited a vaseline impregnated cotton ball didn't work.

To me, absolute reliability and ease of use are paramount. I must be able to ignite my starter with a metal match in bad weather and my starter must burn for at least 5 minutes.

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but if you use the vaseline-impregnated cotton ball technique (see above) and place it on a Rutland safe lite fire-starting square, you've got the best of all possible worlds: instant ignition by metal match and 15 minutes of flame.

Simply place the prepared ("Don King haired") vaseline-impregnated cotton ball on the square, ignite the cotton ball by creating a spark with a metal match, and you've got 15 minutes of flame to start bark-stripped twigs, however wet they might be.

My friend and I got caught in a wet, blowing snow storm and decided to make a fire. I gathered up wood and made a pile while my friend dug arould in his backpack. I was pulling out my cotton balls and metal match I had when he pulled out a HWY Flare and said "watch this" and lit up the wood in seconds. "I could be froze to death and still start a fire with this" he said. I've carried a flare ever since as a back up to the blast match and cotton balls.

I always carry a dozen or so road flares when in a trip by vehicle...

They work great.

But, it might be hard to get them on the plane.