Fire Starters

Someone was kind enough to give me a home made fire starter when we were camping in Yellowstone after failing to start our fire with a store bought fire starter disc. The fire starter I was given worked so well that I came home and started making my own.

Egg Cartons: The egg carton fire starters are easier but they take more wax. In the second stage the egg cartons actually take a lot of work to cut them with tin snips.

Toilet paper rolls. These take more work upfront from folding the bottoms, filling, and making sure they can stand up straight. However they use less wax. They were time consuming as I dipped the bottoms, drizzled the insides, and then finally turned them upside down to dip the tops and I had to allow for them to dry in between steps. These do dry fast! – half roll burned over 20min before I put it out so I could eat dinner. Expect to get a burn time of 15-20 minutes, paraffin wax vapors will catch fire and burn and may have lead to extended burn times that I experienced.

I imagine that the easiest to make would be using cupcake papers however I use silicone cupcake liners so I don’t keep paper ones on hand.

Next I want to try dipping pine cones.

Supplies

  • Cardboard egg carton
  • Toilet paper rolls
  • Shredded paper (paper shredder)
  • Wax paper
  • Lint- 100% cotton or linen not polyesters
  • Gulf wax (sold in 1lb boxes)
  • Cutting board
  • Serrated Utility or pocket knife
  • Tin can (46 oz tomato juice)
  • Scissors & Tin Snips
  • Aluminum tin pans
  • Tongues
  • Coghlan’s Pot Holder – 5.25in

The only item I purchased for this was the paraffin wax. Everything else I already had.

Toilet Paper Rolls– I used my paper shredder to shred some recycled cereal boxes and other items that were in my recycling bin. I used this material to fill my toilet paper rolls.

Egg Cartons– I cut the lids and tabs from the egg cartons into small pieces and filled the egg carton. Lastly I topped the egg carton fire starters with lint. The lint I used came from 100% linen. As a side note we do not dry fleece or polyester in our dryer but instead hang it to dry. It is not a good idea to use lint that came off of man made fabrics such as polyester.

To make the egg carton 12 count use 2 gulf wax bricks. For 24 count use the entire 1lb/4 bricks.

I used these up-cycled aluminum pans to contain and hold the materials. The pans were originally from Costco ready to cook lasagna found near the pastry and meats.

I closed one end of each toilet paper roll to reduce the loss of filling and wax

I cut some of the toilet paper rolls in half so that I can experiment with burn time and wax saturation.

I up-cycled wax paper from a bouquet of flowers to give myself a working area.

Double Boiler Method

Place a silicone or aluminum rack (avoid using a cookie cutter if possible as it will chip and rust) in the pot to prevent the paraffin wax pot from coming into direct contact with the heating element.

I noticed rust starting to form on the melting pot so I added vinegar to the water and this seemed to help stop and remove the rust.

Cut the paraffin wax into pieces no larger than 1”-2”.

Set the stove to medium high or 3-5 on an electric burner (do not use gas stove)
Stir with wooden chop stick ever 3-5 minutes

After filling my fire starters I would find a bit of a mess. This was very easy to clean up and put back inside the heating tin. I also placed the spilled wax container into the freezer to help harden it so that I could easily pry it up.

I put the dried spilled wax back into the melting pot

I recommend using tongues to dip any materials as The melting pot is very tall.

Burn Test

I burned a half roll and it burned for 20 minutes before I put it out so that I could go eat dinner. These worked flawlessly while camping and I couldn’t be happier!