Hi Dave.

In my experience, the cotton balls should have as much vaseline as possible squeezed back out of them, you want them saturated, not soaked. When I prepare a fresh batch, I soak one, then put a dry one on top, soak another, then another dry one, etc. untill I have a medicine bottle about 3/4 full then fill it the rest of the way with dry cotton balls. When the bottle is full, I compress the cotton/vas. mix as much as possible, If I'm getting vaseline oozing out the top, I add more dry cotton, if the top cotton ball is dry, I add a dab of vaseline. It's not an exact science, but a little experimentation should get you there.

As for how far away to hold the flint/striker, I put it right down in contact with the tinder, Works every time for me. If you're using a lighter for your source of spark, again, get as close to the tinder as possible.

Fluffing the cotton ball shouldn't be much of a problem if you get the right cotton/vaseline mix, but as you've already found out, if you've got too much vaseline, you just get a sticky mess. I'd like to point out that in my experience, somewhat less than a full cotton ball is needed to get a fire going if you've got half-way decent DRY kindling (1/4 to 1/3 or less).

You might get other advice on this, but this is what has worked (to start hundreds of fires) for me (I believe in practice makes perfect). Try what I've suggested and let me know how it works for you.

As for the magnesium shavings, I wouldn't go this route unless I couldn't get a fire going without it (wet tinder, no tinder). If you need to resort to the Mag. bar, it will take a while to get enough shavings to have success. I try to get a pile about the size and thickness if a nickel (or bigger) together before I even think of striking a spark. The size/shape of the shavings doesnt really matter, as long as they're small enough (yours sounded just fine) but you HAVE to have ENOUGH. I keep a piece of notebook paper folded around my bar to lay out to catch the shavings on, then pour them where they need to go. After a lot of experimentation with not having enough shavings and not being able to keep them in a nice little pile, this is what I have come up with that works for me. ONE WORD OF CAUTION, that nickel sized pile of shavings WILL burn through a metal ash tray and ignite anything combustible that it's in contact with (trust me on this, I almost burnt the house down, ashtray, table top, and straight through to my leg under the table). It's time consuming getting the shavings off the bar, but it makes neat fireworks for a few seconds. Also, on this, I've found that a hacksaw blade works much better than a knife blade for getting the most shavings with the least sweat.

Hope this helps, let me know.

Troy