Ultimate Survival Technologies WetFire Tinder: Field Testing

Over the last week or so I began testing the Ultimate Survival Technologies WetFire Tinder and thought I would provide you with my results. While I thought it would light when extremely wet I was wrong, but with just a few scrapes of the surface and a ferro rod strike you have a fire. Below I have two videos where I do a wet lighting, burn time testing and another video where I test the tinder to ignite wet twigs.  So take a look and the videos and pictures below and I will let you come to your own decision on this product. If you are interested in buying this product now, click on one of the links below to order from Amazon.

 

 WetFire- Water and Burn-time Testing

Packaging Notes: The WetFire  product is double packaged with both an inner and outer plastic package. Once it is taken out of the inner package its effectiveness begins to degrade so for long-term use leave them in the package. Over a week time period (temperature range from 36F-80F with intermediate rain) there was no detrimental effect on performance.

WetFire Get's Wet: So the main test I had for this product is to test it when soaked water (aside from using it to light a fire).

Process When Wet- In my book it passed as you merely have to either wipe it dry or scrape a little material off and strike a ferro rod into it and you have fire when most other tinder will be water logged and not effective.

Ferro Rod Strike Post Submersion: It only took a few scrapes of the ferro rod to get the cube to catch post submersion without needing to process the tinder further.

Flame From Full WetFire: While the burn-time is a good bit lower than my fire pad fire starters (LINK-HERE) and dragon ball fire starters (LINK-HERE) it is still quite effective, I just wish it was able to be out of the package for easy storage in my pocket fire kit (LINK-HERE).

WetFire Used To Light Wet Twigs:

Finely Dice The Tinder: Below I use the Jeff White Patch Knife to finely dice the WetFire tinder to expose the most surface area to get a nice pile of tinder to light quickly.

One Scrape and Fire: One scrape of my firesteels.com (Buy It HERE-LINK) ferro rod with my Battle Horse Knives Short Trail and you have not only a shower of sparks as pictured but also instant fire as you can see below the upper shower of sparks.

Fire: I added a slight brace to the back side of the fire to lean the twigs against so they could begin to dry out and ultimately ignite

 

One Minute Fire: After 1 minute I easily have rather wet twigs at combustion temperature and ready to take additional material to build a sustainable fire is needed.

 Don't Have a fire Kit? Buy One Here:

 

Conclusions: 

Things I like about this product: 1)  While it doesn't work as well as I would like when soaking wet you simply have to dry it off or scrape off a little material and you have fire; 2) It's fairly compact; 3) you can put it out and reuse it if needed (possibility of using it to light multiple marginal tinder bundles); and 4) It will easily ignite wet twigs. Now for what I don't like: A) It degrades over time once out of its packaging which is a bit too bulky for an Altoids tin; B) The burn time is shorter than my homemade fire starters; C) The intensity of fire it puts off is much less than that of my homemade fire starters or even fatwood; and D) It costs money vs making it or just finding what I need in the woods. So where does that leave me? I personally don't keep them in my kit but would consider them for fishing, whitewater and kayak trips where I could just scrape a little off to light a fire and then throw it back in my kit for the next fire. So I will say it does have a place for those who spend a lot of time on the water and need some kind of sure fire in their kit. 

Have something outdoor/bushcraft/trapping/preparedness/hiking/camping/fishing/hunting related you want me to make a post about? Leave me a comment and I will see what I can do! As always feel free to leave your questions and comment below! Also if you enjoy the blog please vote for us on the following websites to help us reach a wider audience:

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