Homemade Fire Starter: Cotton & Petroleum Jelly

Homemade Fire Starter: Cotton & Petroleum Jelly

Everyone seems to love this style of DIY fire starter so I thought I would try it out and share the results with all of you. I have never been a big fan of this type of fire starter simply because of the mess it creates and the issues created by carrying the fire starter. While contemplating this issue I began to think of how to mitigate the downfalls of transporting this fire starter without all of the mess that goes along with it and the only solution I could come up with is to carry the petroleum jelly in a sample size squeeze container and carry some 100% cotton makeup pads in my Char Tin which would give me the dual use of making Char Cloth (Learn how HERE). OK now with the feasibility of carrying the fire starter out of the way lets get down to business with a quick burn-time video and directions on how to make this extremely easy to make fire starter.

1) As the video demonstrates this fire starter is extremely easy to light with a Ferro Rod and has a burn time of roughly seven minutes which isn't too shabby for a DIY fire starter. Not quite on par with my DIY Fire Pad (Link HERE) starters on burn time or intensity but pretty close.

2) First item you will need is some form of Petroleum Jelly... This happens to be the only kind available in my area at the time.

3) 2nd and final item, some form of cotton. I utilized cotton make up squares as I have them on hand for making FirePad Fire Starters (Link HERE).

4) Place a liberal amount of Petroleum Jelly on each side of the cotton.

5) As referenced before this is quite a messy fire starter but could be mitigated with a squeeze packet of Petroleum Jelly.

6) Get your ferro rod of choice and strike directly into the fire starter.

 

7) Once you get a decent amount of involvement of your fire starter you can begin to add "Smalls"

8) Once you have smalls ignition and involvement you can begin adding medium and then larger sticks. From the lighting of the fire starter to this level of involvement I had less than 2 minutes.