We wanted to share a post about our little trick for creating useful fire starters.  These fire starters are portable, compact, and use recycled materials right from your home.  First you will need to collect the following: A stapler, card board tubes from toilet paper rolls or paper towels.  Next collect as much dryer lent as you can find.  Finally, you will need either Vaseline or some similar product.  Another option is to use leftover fat from your daily cooking, bacon grease works great.   I personally use Vaseline for my fire starters as it is easier.

Step one:  Take the recycled toilet paper roll and cut it in half. This gives you about a 2.5” to 3” cylinder.

Step two: Next fold one side of the toilet paper roll flat and staple the ends.

Step three: grab a small amount of dryer lint and completely cover it with Vaseline or animal fat.  The dryer lint does a great job at taking a spark.  Adding Vaseline as a propellant will add to the heat and flame of the fire starter and provide greater fuel for your fire.  The Vaseline also wicks away moisture from the lint.  If for some reason condensation gets on your fire starter the Vaseline will still ignite. Stuff the dryer lint/Vaseline combination into the open end of the toilet paper cylinder.

Step four: Next fold the open end flat and staple.  You now have a small biscuit like fire starter that is self-contained.

Step five: To start a fire simply open one end of the fire starter biscuit.  Direct your spark from a flint and steel striker into the open end.  The card board will act as a wind break for your spark. It will also consume itself as fuel by the fire once the fire starter ignites.  You can store these little biscuits in a zip lock bag for your next camping trip or emergency situation.  If you use animal fat as the ignition source then we recommend storing the zip lock bag of fire starters in your freezer.  This will preserve the fat for a longer period of time.  We only do this if we are planning a camping trip and the animal fat will be used in a relatively short time period.  Grab a bag out of the freezer and by the time you show up at the campsite they will be thawed out and ready to use.

A family of four will collect a lot of toilet paper tubes and paper towel tubes in no time.  Likewise you can get a bag of dryer lint in just a few weeks.  All of this material should not go to waste.  Instead put it to good use for your next campfire.

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