Fire Starting when the wood is wet.

[Frank1960]

I carry a army heat tablet with me when out in the woods but another thing is cotton balls mixed with vasaline and also carry a 9 volt battery in a medicine bottle and some steel wool. Also have flint/steel/char cloth but have yet to get it going lol

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Upgraded Night Vision Monocular Digital Infrared Monocular Telescope for 100% Darkness with 8X Zoom - Grab it through Amazon!

[AU24K]

My fire starting friend this past weeked was dried pine resin from scars and wounds of coniferous trees.

Found "in the wild"....No "cotton balls" needed here.

Good suggestions though, and I can include dryer lint for another method or two....

My Best,

Scott

 

[NjStacker22]

I didnt see it here so i figured i would post it.Take some cotton balls and saturate them one at a time with vaseline.Quite a few will fit in a plastic film container and,one cotton ball treated that way will burn for up to 10 minutes

Two posts up

But yes, Vaseline soaked cotton balls work very well and are very light to carry.

 

[63bkpkr]

Any wet wood can be made to burn as long as you get it hot enough. A forest that is tinder dry takes only a short time to be soaked in a good rain storm and then starting a fire can be troublesome. Having found myself in this situation several times I carry home made fire starters.

Take the portion of a paper egg carton that holds the eggs, fill the egg holding sections with relatively dry sawdust, pour melted wax over the sawdust till it is filled with wax and the paper egg carton is soaked with wax as well. These last forever and only require a dry match or a butane lighter to start. Once the wax has hardened break the units off from the main carton as needed.

Okay so the fire starter is burning now what to put on it as everything is wet? If there are pine trees around, take a few well needled branches from the tree, shake the water off, break off a bunch of the small branched clusters and place them on the burning fire starter. There will be some snapping and cracking but as soon as the surface water is gone the pine will burst into flame. Of course if you can locate a patch of pine pitch it burns even better (as indicated by earlier posts).

Being warm and dry is a blessing and can be a life saver and if nothing else you can cook that steak and potato you carried in when it was nice and sunny, once you have a nice fire going that is......63bkpkr

Oh, and thank you GSA for teaching me how to make these!