Hmm, could you elaborate on why you're excited about tinder cards? How is it more than just wax + paper?
So far the list of pros:
*kind of laminated into layers
*rigid but easy to work with
*seems to be pretty water resistant
*burns long and slow from top
*burns bright and hot from the bottom
*score it with a knife and light it with a spark
*can be bought for $6.50 or so
Your strategy of vacuum-seal-into-zip-lock-mylar seems fantastic as a tinder carry option , esp long term
I'm not sure how the Tinder Card is manufactured. It smells a bit like beeswax but probably isn't. I like the stuff for the following reasons:
1) It's rigid. It's not structural strong like wood but more live heavy cardboard. This makes it ideal for several applications. For example I can cut rounds out of it sized to fit the lid of my UCO Match case and once pressed up in there it's stiff enough to stay there. It makes a great backing board, and it will stand up if you lean it up on something.
2) It can be be "frizzed up" while retaining its shape. You can score the top side of it or one end to the point where it can easily be lit with a spark while staying in one shape. Some won't care but I like that for the way I build fires.
3) It burns at a nice, controlled rate. Unlike paper that flares up it's more like a cotton ball soaked with PJ. It's candle-like.
4) Being rigid you can cut it to fit specific spaces. For instance I will often cut it into little sticks that I can slip into a match case.
I like to use it in conjunction with other products. For instance, a cotton ball is great in a match case because it stuffs it up to prevent rattling and works as tinder. But it burns very fast; coating it in PJ is great but it's not much good to pack around matches then.
If you want I can mail you a little chunk to try out.
Phaedrus, you may have posted it before but what bags & sealing equipment are you using? The setups you've described sound great, although their performance may be improved even more if you add a bunch of smilies...
I use a light commercial chamber vacuum machine from Vacmaster. Mine is a
VP215C (which I notice is now $250 cheaper than when I bought mine!
).
Chamber vac machines are great! Unlike a Foodsaver which sucks air out of the bad you place a bag in the chamber and all the air is evacuated from the chamber, not just the bag. It's pretty neat- if you seal something that's very wet you can watch the water boil as the pressure drops. At any rate this allows the use of many more kinds of bags than you can use with suction or snorkel machines. The heavy duty seal bar can easily deal with very heavy mylar and will do a passable job of sealing retort bags of the type used for MREs.
I use smallish bags (around 3" x 4" or so) for fire stuff. I've used somewhat larger bags to seal WetFire and Weber cubes as well. WetFire seems to go bad pretty quickly sometimes in the flimsy little baggies it's sold in. But sealed in a heavy mylar pouch they seam to last indefinitely.
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