A little over a year ago I purchased some Weber Lighter Cubes from Home Depot and vacuum-sealed a batch. This was after reading about them online and wondering how they stacked up to UST's WetFire Tinder. For a fraction of the price of the WetFire, you can get many cubes of the Weber offering. The big downside: how to store and transport them. The manufacturer's packaging is pretty flimsy and the foil backing is easily broken.

So I decided to open up the vacuum packaging today to see how long-term storage had affected the Weber Cubes. By now, they had been in everything from a garage to a backyard storage shed. Temperatures likely varied from 40-90 degrees (F). The firestarter used to ignite the crushed cube was a UST Strike Force.



The vacuum sealing process had broken the foil seal around several of the cubes. I took a cube from the most damaged area for testing.



After a few strikes, it was lit and cranking out some serious flame and heat. A slight breeze couldn't even put it out.



Total burn time was a little over 2:30 minutes. This compared very favorably to the 2:40 minute burn time when the cubes were brand new, in original packaging, and tested a year ago. Overall, I would rate the test as a success. If you have the ability to vacuum-seal some of these to preserve them, they should last at least a year in storage, if not more!

Nice - thanks for the tip

Teacher

Nice test! Thanks!

HJ

More than welcome! Anything fun in the name of "science". LOL

Thanks Cedfire!

Thank you for going to the trouble to test it and let us know!

Sue

Very cool. I did the same thing back in April or so but I haven't tested any of them yet. It's good to know though that I can expect them to work. When I was sealing them I packaged them in a variety of quantities from an entire package down to 3, 2 or even 1 cube sizes. Just as a test I also double and triple sealed a few of them. A single cube (triple sealed) rides in my Maxpedition 12 x 5 bottle bag survival kit.