Feedback on cotton wool fire lighters

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Mar 12, 2015
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Jarrow
Hey guys,

I decided to make some fire lighters out of cotton wool, vaseline and candle wax. They burn great but I can't seem to get them alight with a ferro rod.

Any tips on how I can improve?

Pictures attached:

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Hoping to get some better ones made up soon :)
 
You need to be lighting fuzzy wool, so if you made little wax bricks, you need to break them open to expose fibres. Not too much Vaseline needed either.
 
I make them to have a wax shell but plain inner. The shell keeps them dry but pulled open to fluff up the cotton wool, they easy take a spark. i.e. Don't soak the cotton wool 100%.
 
I have done both cotton pad and cotton ball, I usually break the cotton ball into three before soaking in liquid vaseline, each one then goes into a small ziploc bag the pads go into a small round tin.I haven't bothered with the candle wax at all, I usually open up the cotton ball and make it as big as I can without breaking it apart, teasing out the threads, one good strike of the ferro rod lights it up.
 
Make them just how you have but a little more fibre dense in the middle. Push a match through the middle so that the head is just popping out of the other side and get that wax sealed too [big cooks matches are best].

You then have the option to use it like a waterproof match by striking it and it will burn for quite a long time... Or you can break it open and rip up the internal fibres and light from a rod.

I used to make them like that when I was younger.... I called them "Fire Flares" because I thought it sounded cool.... But now I realise it sounds pretty dorky. Lol

Still they are very handy.
 
Make them just how you have but a little more fibre dense in the middle. Push a match through the middle so that the head is just popping out of the other side and get that wax sealed too [big cooks matches are best].

You then have the option to use it like a waterproof match by striking it and it will burn for quite a long time... Or you can break it open and rip up the internal fibres and light from a rod.

I used to make them like that when I was younger.... I called them "Fire Flares" because I thought it sounded cool.... But now I realise it sounds pretty dorky. Lol

Still they are very handy.

That sounds like a great idea! May have to give that a try at some point. Fire flare's sound cool enough to me, haha!
 
Fire flares sounds brilliant to me. Might have to have a stab at making some

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