You can saturate a cotton ball two differerent ways. You can rub PJ into a cotton ball or you can dunk cotton balls into melted PJ. Both ways are messy. I prefer dunking because it makes a more consistent saturation. Cotton does not need to be "dry" to light, but as others have said, the deeper you saturate, the more difficult to light. If you choose to submerge, you will need a way to pull the ball out of the hot liquid because melted PJ even with as low of a heat setting as you can get, the PJ will eventually be too warm to your touch. When you pull the ball out, it will be too saturated to light, so you have to squeeze a lot of the PJ out. I've used different methods. My latest, which worked quite well was to use a garlic press (or maybe it was a lime press - I'm no cook). Experiment with the pressure that you apply on the press. I think I bought my press for $3 - $5 at Wallyworld. Create batches with varying pressure. The goal is to saturate as deeply as possible while still maintaining the ability to light with some margin of error due to weather, skill, patience, etc. Make absolutely certain that the cotton balls are 100% cotton and use the largest you can find, which will be marked something like "jumbo plus" or "super jumbo". I saturate to the point so that I get a burn time of approx 4 to 4 1/2 minutes. You can saturate a ball to the point that it will burn 5 1/2 to 6 minutes but then it starts getting trickier to light. With a 4 to 4 1/2 burn time ball, you have a fire starter that lights very rapidly and yet still has good burn time. When you're done, TEST your product! To light, gently stretch the cotton ball in all directions so that it makes a birds nest about 2 to 2 1/2 inches across then apply a spark or WWII flamethrower or whatever. And unless you want to sleep in the doghouse, don't use the ladies best pot. Buy a small aluminum disposable pan - at any food store in the cooking aisle. Store in a small ziploc.

xavier.ruiz@cox.net