| Cool Camping Concepts | November 16, 1999 |
Fire Starting
Different Firestarting Methods
- (Butane) Lighters: Also called chemical firestarting, lighters are useful as a back-up, and in very wet areas.
- Magnifying Glass: Using a magnifying glass, or sometimes an eyeglass lens, you can concentrate the sun’s light to ignite tinder (straw, dry grass, 0000 steel wool) in starting a fire.
- Flint & Steel: This can be used again to ignite small tinder in starting a fire. Your Scout knife blade can also be used as the "steel."
- Battery: Allowing the current of a battery to flow through very thin steel wool (size 0000), will ignite the steel wool, and any tinder placed near it.
- Commercial: If you choose, you can buy heat tabs, or flammable pastes.
Great Firestarters You Can Make Yourself
- Tuna Can: Clean out an empty tuna fish (or cat food) can. In it, place corrugated cardboard in a spiral circle. Then fill it with melted paraffin (wax) and sawdust (or dryer lint.) Before it cools, add a piece of waxed line or string in the middle, which will act as the wick. This can be used to start one fire. However, the can obviously will not burn. So, don’t forget to remove it after the fire is out cold.
- Newspaper: Found in the Boy Scout Handbook, take a newspaper and roll it until it is about an inch in diameter. In about 3 inch intervals, tie a piece of waxed line or string, and then cut them in the 3 inch lengths. They can now be dipped in melted paraffin, and will start one fire each.
- Fuzz Stick: With your Scout knife, shave and lift slivers off a stick, but not remove them. Then, stand each fuzz stick up as part of the firelay. Lighting these will help to ignite smaller tinder placed nearby.
| Mark Amatrucola mark@shushugah.org |
www.shushugah.org | James C. jc1@troop237.org |
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