To light and serve as a coal base, I
always carry half inch stips of corrugated cardboard that have been soaked in candle wax, cotton balls that have been soaked in candle wax and then pressed into cubes about the size of a sugar cube, and a small plastic bottle of sterno. I also always have some dryer lint in a doubled zip lock bag with a dessicant pack in the first bag. The items saturated with wax will light easily and burn very hot for several minutes and allow you to get a good fire base established even if you have to use wet wood. For fire, I always have a fully ready zippo, wooden matches that I have personally waterproofed, a couple of bics (it doesn’t matter if the flint gets wet, it is still full of butane and will light with a match), a flint and steel in a waterproof box with some scarps of scorched cotton (you have to have something to catch the spark), and some 000 steel wool and a couple of 9 volt batteries.
All of the above are for emergencies. Normally, you should be able to start a fire very easily with just a match if: good dry tinder, calm day, not in physical distress. It is the other times that the other stuff is for. However I do practice one of the emergency fire starts at least once per camping trip. No good having it if you are not proficient at using it.
Advice from a geezer
Back in the old Grumman days, we carried 15 minute railroad flares. These are long enough that you can move them around by hand to ignite various parts of your fuel pile.
In a critical situation, you do not want to d**k around with magnesium fire starters, zippo lighters, lifeboat matches and the such. While they all have their place, by the nature of your post you are referring to an EMERGENCY! Boy Scout skills be damned! Strike the flare and watch the fire grow!
Jim
a simple, but good
fire starter is made every day by your clothes dryer. When you empty the lint trap just collect a zip-lock bag of this fuzzy stuff, and you have a great fire starter for your emergency camp pack. The stuff really works. No soaking in chemicals or treating to make it ignite.
paddle safe, LJB
Funny that you should mention
that. It happened to me on Monday and I ruined two boxes of matches trying to get a fire going. My hands were soaking the matches. Fortunately, one of my compadres had dry hands and another had one of those butane grill lighters in his drybag. I plan on adding one to mine, as well as a small package of wax fire starters.
I made fire starters out of…
…sawdust, parrafin, the heavy paper egg cartons,
candle wicks, and canon fuze.
You used to be able to buy fuze for replica
cannons. the one I had fired a .45 Cal ball and
had a 6" barrel. I don’t know if the fuze is
still available.
anyway, I filled the egg carton “holes” with
enough parraffin to hold the sawdust together.
Then i braided 2 candle wicks with a length of
canon fuze. Coated the braid with parraffin and
put them into the egg carton “holes.”
The fuze made sure the wicks burned.
Worked quite well.
I got some leftover napalm from my
three tours in 'nam… shit works great.