In our post about our Southern BBQ I mention using a fire starter. You can buy all sorts of these in the many camping sections of the big box stores, they work well but most of them are made from some crazy bad petroleum accelerants. These are OK if your looking for something to put in your back country survival pack but if you plan on starting a fire your want to do a bunch of cooking on ie: Southern BBQ...... I won't take the chance.
The following is how we make our fire starters which we use of any fire we need to start. Yes I admit the paraffin wax we usually use for these is a petroleum product but it's not the volatile stuff a lot of the store bought starters are made from. If you're really concerned about what you use for wax you can source some soywax which is hydrogenated to make it a solid.
My 2 cent is the processing in either case has it's downside and the 1/2 to 1 oz of wax that is used is long gone by the time the fire is ready to cook on or with. Besides what's easier than recycling your old candle stubs?
Here's what you need:
-paper fiber egg cartons
-sawdust (from your table saw or the neighbour's or anyone really....it occurred to me that If you can't get sawdust you could use really dry leaves from your backyard)
-wax (any kind works but "free" or recycled is always best)
-1 old pot coffee or otherwise (preferably with a pouring spout but it's not critical)
-A flat, reasonable level surface to put the egg cartons on.
-Some sort of heat source.
Melt the wax...........
this sounds easy and is rather but there are a few things to please remember.
Only heat the wax on a low to medium low temperature it takes longer but it is better then potentially battling a fire. Check the melting process often once the solid wax melts the temperature rises very quickly. Hot wax will burn your skin and it is impossible to stop the burning since it coats and cools slowly. Paraffin melts at 47 °C and 64 °C (117°F to 147°F) Soywax melts at 49 to 52°C (121-125 F) Hot enough to really burn you. Be very careful when pouring. Don't wear clothing you can't live without since melted wax is extremely hard to get out of cloth.
Trim all the extra bit off the egg carton so that you only have the cups the eggs came in. (be sure to put the waste bits in the recycling
Lay them out so that they are side by side and touching. This makes it really easy to fill them with saw dust and pouring the wax. As a side note: We read about and tried using the lint from the screen in the clothes dryer...seemed reasonable and earth friendly but after burning one and seeing the black sooty smoke and fume coming off of it we decided hmmmm... maybe not. I think to much synthetic junk gets caught in the dryer. Face it most of us don't wear just pure cotton or wool or other natural fiber. Wood is where it's at.
Fill the egg cartons with sawdust. It you have a lot of saw dust fill 'em to the max if not do like I did and only fill them half way. The idea of the sawdust is to soak up some of the wax and provide more fuel for the fire starter. Actually if you look close at the trays on the bottom of the photo I had to "re-purpose" some of the rabbit's bedding to make sure I had enough wood.
So once the wax is all melted, the sawdust in place and your hands steadied it's time to pour. Here's were you run the risk of getting wax on your clothes due to splashing so pour carefully. What I try and do is pour a small amount in each cup starting from one side. This serves two purposes....... one it make sure all cups get a least a little wax. Two, and more importantly by the time you go back to the beginning to pour more wax the first little bit has started to soak in and set, making sure the rest of the wax does seep right through the fiber paper.
Now your basically done you just need to wait until the wax has cooled. Once this it done you can shake any loose sawdust into a pail or bag (for using the next time a batch is needed) then either cut them into their respective cups or leave them together and cut them apart as needed. When you cut them leave the "wings" on them......the little bit of material between each cup and don't worry if all the paper is not soaked with wax 'cause once you light them and the wax starts to melt it won't matter. We have always cut them apart right off the bat so when a fire starter is need it's ready to go.
The nice things about these fire starts is how easy they are to light and how long they will burn. One of these will burn by itself for at least 6-8 minutes. Add some small kindling topped with a little bit larger split wood and you'll have a fire in less than 3-4 minutes. Hope this has been helpful
1 comments:
this was super helpful! i have done this but think i am going to try! thanks!
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