Hi everybody! I have a question to ask to all experts in here. I want to make a survival kit and I will include matches, lighter etc. I want to know what can I use for tinder, something that will be easy to find and easy to work. Does vaseline with cotton work, for example?
Thanks in advance

Cotton saturated with petrolatum jelly ( aka vaseline) is one method. Just make sure to squeeze the excess out until the cotton has a greasy feeling to it. natural cotton will burn while the synthetic balls will merely act as a candle wick. You could also collect some fiber egg cartons and fill with a mixture of sawdust,woodshavings and wax.

Cotton and Vaseline works great, cheap, make all you need for pennies and stores forever. That's all I use in my various kits anymore. Try it, if you think you need more there are other options.

You can also make firestarters with paraffin wax melted into just about anything flamable and absorbant. I use these made from egg carton paper, and wood shavings for firestarting in the rainy season. Mac

does cotonbal+vasline works ? hell yeah ! a cottonball+vasline tinder burns long, hot, easy to ignite and they are cheap ! stored in a watertight cotainer and they are unbeatable ! you can make them by either just applying vaseline on cottonballs, fold the cotonball and than squaze it the vaseline throught the coton out. OR you melt vaseline, stick you vaseline balls in it with tweezers and than squeze it out again, with something ( garlick press, spoons, etc. ).

you can also try commercial tinder, firestarting gels, some fuel bars (trioxide), magnisium ( magnisum firestarters ), 0000 steelwoll, etc.
i recommend buying 2 flints if you plan to put a flint in to a kit, one for the kit, the other for practice. they are the most reliable firestarting equipment if you got tinder: waterproof, uneffected by hight, temperature, nothing to leak, etc.

Tinder catches the spark, Kindling starts the fire. 100% Cotton fluff (whether bought as cotton balls or gathered from the dryer after drying a load or two of towels and jeans) will catch a spark very well if it is dry and burn quickly. Adding some petroleum jelly (enough to make it greasy) will make it burn hotter and longer. Adding too much petrol will convert it to kindling - it will burn even longer but will not fluff well enough to catch a spark. Wood sawdust / shavings / cardboard in fiber egg-crate cup with parrafin poured over the top will be great kindling but won't catch a spark. Some latex or rubber is also great kindling as are trick birthday candles. None of these will catch a spark but will burn hot enough and long enough to dry and light small twigs and pinecones which will take you from there.

I haven't tried this yet but a friend of mine says that when he was growing up a common ciggarette lighter was a spark wheel and some cotton twine. Says that his friends carried the cotton twine wound around the dead lighter (think bic) and would simply flick the spark wheel with the burnt end of the twine in position and presto it would catch the spark and they would have some burning twine to start the fire. I haven't tried this because I can't find 100% cotton twine. All I can find is reinforced with polyester.

Being totally ignorant in fire starting methods, I too had doubts about Coton + Vaseline.... until I actually tried it.
As Minime said, it catches sparks very easily and burns very well.
Stored into bits of plastic straws, it's very simple to put in a PSK.

So, just try it ...!!!

Another, more bulky item that catches sparks very well is the gel sold with the the Firestar type cooker.


Alain