Last night, I had to use a couple of wooden matches from the supplies. I went to light one match and it snapped in half. Tried another, same thing. Long story short, all the wooden matches I tried, be it factory waterproof or regular strike anywheres are extremely dried out and brittle...although they all light.

These matches were 9-10 years old and so I bought new matches today to replace them with.

Any suggestions on what to do with 500 - 600 old brittle matches?

make a Giant Match???

When striking, use a "push" move against the striker. That often works well for me. If in a real problem with striking them, use your BIC lighter to light the match.

sell them on Ebay as Vintage....and use the money to buy
a lifetime supply of Bic's--

Mail them to me and I'll dispose of them properly. Oh so VERY properly!

-Blast

Get out the blast-bandages...

Use them as tinder.

Sue

First off, I have no idea how you tried lighting the matches. So this isn't addressed at you. But, this seems as good a place as any to comment that I am noticing that many folks today, especially younger people, have no clue how to light a match, other than an abstract sort of theoretical knowledge. They never have had to! Things many of us take for granted, are no longer "normal."

When I watch them try, they inevitably hold the match at the end (got to avoid that flame) and are surprised when it snaps. Eventually they figure out that won't work. They are totally flumoxed by book matches.

Just FWIW....

Speaking of book matches, I was back home visiting my family for the holiday and needed to light a candle. The only matches I found were a pack of book matches from around 1978 or so. Lit up with no problem, although the paper did break too far down on one and (seeing this as a good opportunity to practice a last match survival scenario) I wound up burning my fingers. But hey, I lit the candle. Note to self, use tweezers next time. Anyway, point is, if paper matches from 25+ years ago are still useable, I'm pretty sure yours are. Like DR said though, you just have to strike them properly. Try holding your index finger over the head while striking so you don't put any stress on the wood.

I learned how to light a self lighting match the old fashioned way...part of fraternity "education" was to strike a match using your pants leg and then say the greek alphabet 3 times before blowing it out.
If you didn't strike, broke the match or didn't complete the alphabet 3X, it was "hit the floor for 25 pushups" time.
I still know how to stike, light and even the speed say the greek alphabet to this day.

But now that would all be considered "hazing" and someones feelings might get hurt, and we can't have that, can we now?