fire starters

[fossil]

Yeah, yer right, come to think of it...it could have become the "Mother of All Headaches". Rick

 

[fraxinus]

When fully dry, pine cones are great fire starters. They burn for a surprisingly long time with an intensely hot flame. Free for the collecting, too.

 

[trailblaster]

My dogs like to chew on the birch bark too. I always thought they did because it was easier. Unfortunately, I tend to lose up to a quarter cord a year from them taking from my splitting pile and dumping it on the front yard or running back into the woods and dropping it. They think its a big game BUT they know not to take from the stacked piles. when I split, I toss the punky wood and they love to fetch it.

 

[jebatty]

pine cones are great fire starters

My wife collects the pine cones, then melts the wax from the burned down candles we save, dips the cones in the scented candle wax, when cool ties a ribbon around each cone, and then sells a bag of six for $3.00. They make a great table piece, bathroom freshener, dry pot pourri substitute, and then a fire starter. One will do.

A couple of pine cones without the wax do as good a job at fire starting.

Top down method rocks.

 

[granpajohn]

Has anyone used Seymour Fireblox? I got some free samples in the box my Seymour stackit brackets came in.

Yes, I tried the Seymour Fireblox that came with my Stackit Brackets. The can also be broken into half or quarter pieces, and worked very well. Like most fire starters, they appear to be paraffin and sawdust. I don't know what they cost, but we decided it wouldn't be worth it normally. So, my wife made her own wax-n-sawdust starters by using cupcake papers. I suggested mixing the sawdust with grated wax and then melting the whole thing together in the oven. But, she wanted to get rid of all those old candle stubs ASAP, so melted them all down and poured them into the cupcake papers half filled with sawdust. This is not worth the mess it makes. Furthermore, if the sawdust is from hardwood, it doesn't adsorb the wax well, so they should be stirred together. She added a center wick to about half of them, and those are easier to use. In the end, they do light fires very, very well, and they look nice.

She also has tried the pine cone in wax method. This seems foolproof, but also makes a mess, and the wax doesn't adhere to the cone well. (This is probably fixable, but I haven't figured out how.) They also didn't burn too well, no matter how waxy they were. Our cones are actually spruce, not pine, if that makes any difference.

I also cut up a DuraFlame style fake log to use as starters. These don't work too badly, but I used an electric chop saw to make each puck, and that made a mess of the saw. I used the "sawdust" to form little meatballs of the stuff, and those burned fine too. I tried a hatchet at first, but the log is just to hard for that. I probably won't try this again.

The best free method we use is to make faggots out of twigs. We live in a woodland, (small, but drops plenty of limbs and sticks), mostly beech droppings. I tie the bundles with string and store them in the shed. The problem with these is that they take up much more room than a paraffin starter. (My neighbor keeps his under the garage stair.) This means they also take room in the stove, making it harder to stuff it full of wood. But, they work better than expected, and are more consistent then expected.

Would like to know if anyone can offer improvements on these methods. I prefer to recycle stuff that would be wasted, instead of purchasing.

 

[savageactor7]

^My wife recycles cereal and other cardboard boxes ...stuffs 'em with splitter trash and newspapers. She usually keeps a stash of 3 or 4 under the indoor wood holder where they're out of sight. Mostly we use them in shoulder season...once it gets cold we burn 24/7 and hot coals are enough to get the fire hot quickly since we're using smaller splits.

 

[Jags]

I start with one paper match in the bottom of the stove, then take recycled (saved) tooth picks and make a tick-tack-toe style stack above that, then I perfectly position four 1/4" sticks, balanced on top of the tooth picks. Then come the perfectly whittled splits from a 6 year old log seasoned specifically for kindling and only split when there is a full moon with 30% humidity or less, then....oh never mind.

Or I grab a super cedar, or another fire starter, throw the sucker in the bottom, a couple of small splits, a couple of large split and light. 15 min. of startup air and its time to start controlling the burn.