Homemade Fire Starters: Cotton Ball & Vaseline Starters

Fire starters

Today’s post is on homemade fire starters.  They are easy and cheap to make.  The one I have used for years and always works is cotton balls and Vaseline.  Simply impregnate the cotton balls with Vaseline.  This can be done easy by rolling the cotton ball in warm Vaseline.   By warm I mean set it out in the sun warm, I do not recommend liquefying the Vaseline on a stove.

For years I have carried these in my seventy-two hour kit by stuffing them in a 35mm film can.  You can squeeze quite a few in one.  But with the advent of digital cameras, film cans are no longer easy to obtain.  Pill bottles work quite well, but I was talking to a friend who has been wrapping his in aluminum foil. To use them he cuts an x in the foil package and pulls a small amount of cotton out and lights it.

Both method work quite well, a cotton ball if properly impregnated with Vaseline with burn for approximately 10 minutes, with a good hot flame.  The foil wrapped cotton ball will burn for a longer period.  Both can be ignited with a match or a fire starter (spark producing device).

Using damp wood from my yard it was easy to start a fire using either device.

Howard

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