How to make your own Tinder
Home Made Survival Gear
Fire starting usually consists of three stages: lighting the tinder,
kindling, and then the fuel. Tinder is the easily lit material that
you light first in order to get your small pieces of wood (kindling)
started. Then you can start adding your larger pieces of wood (fuel.)
Dried grass, leaves, lint, inner bark, or anything else that can
take a spark are considered tinder. Just be sure your tinder is
dead and dry. It can be hard to find proper tinder in the woods
since things found on the ground are usually wet or damp. Commercially
made emergency
tinder is available but you can create your own perfectly fine
tinder in your home.
You can make your own tinder with some cotton balls and some regular
petroleum jelly. Soaking the cotton balls with petroleum jelly will
create an emergency tinder that will burn for about 8 minutes. This
is plenty of time to get other tinder and kindling on fire.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is to melt the petroleum
jelly in a pan over low heat and then place the cotton balls in
the melted liquid. The cotton balls will soak up the liquid. Set
the soaked cotton balls on a paper plate and let them harden. Be
careful because the liquid is hot.
You should just let the emergency tinders cool completely before
doing anything with them. Once they are cooled, put them in an appropriate
tinder box and you're all set. I have a batch in a large zip lock
bag as extras. Others I have in a couple of watertight match boxes.
Another great idea I've learned is to wrap the soaked cotton balls
in aluminum foil. If you wrap them in aluminum foil, you can make
a candle that will last about an hour. Take your knife and cut a
couple of slices just through the aluminum foil. From the opening,
you can pull out a few tufts of cotton that will act as your wick.
Light the wick and you have a candle. I've done this and got about
an hour out of one petroleum soaked cotton balls. It went out once
after about a half hour but I simply pulled a bit more cotton out
and it stayed lit for another half hour.
Now you know how to make your own tinder.
So put your cotton balls in foil and have long lasting candles!
One of the Reference websites: M4040
Survival. Great info on this site!
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