Has anyone had any experience using these and if so anyone know of a US dealer?

Tinder Cards

I'd say make your own its cheaper. Paper towels and parrifin. 3 or 4 layers of towels cut to sice should do it nicely.

PS put a sheet of waxed paper between cards to keep them from melting together in a solid mass. The waxed paper is also a source of tinder.

You want the best tinder card?
Laminate a piece of cotten/vaseline tinder inbetween two pieces of paper. When you need to use it tear the laminate into its two halves, each side should have a piece of paper stuck on it. You take a little of the cotten/vaseline tinder split it between the two halves and light one. The cotten will catch, followed by the paper, followed by the plastic laminate (which burns quite hot). Because the tinder is laminated it is 100% sealed and waterproof too.

Since the promoter says they are fiberous, I'm going to guess they might be felt of some kind. So...

Go to a fabric store, and ask them if they have a non-synthetic felt. Even if you have to buy it off the bolt, a quarter yard shouldn't be much more than a few bucks- keep in mind that is a piece of material 9 inches long by 44 to 50 inches wide. Cut some pieces to the size you want. Test thier burnability. If you like how they flame, add something nice and stable for an excellerant, like wax, maybe with some aluminum or magnesium flake mixed in with it (just be careful during the mixing, but the wax will protect it from oxidation during storage).

Just an idea.

Felt is made of wool. You will very likely not be satified with the way it burns. I tested some wool and a felt for the way it burns and in most cases the flames went out on their own. BTW: they were very hard to light too.

I've wondered about using dust bunnies as tinder. But, since most of mine are composed of dog and cat hair, maybe not.

Felt is either wool or polyester (plastic). What about mixing melted parafin with fine sawdust and quickly mashing it flat between two pieces of scrap Formica-type laminate until it cools? Just an idle thought.

If anyone wants to try the dust bunnies, just ask -- I've got plenty <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />, and they shouldn't cost much to ship. (If they do work, I'm living in a powderkeg...)

Sue

ok... in that case, the "felt" left on the dryer screen after doing a load of towels and socks.

If you can't make it work right the first time, change a variable.

In this forum the term most frequently used for this is dryer lint. It works but ideally you should use lint from cotton clothes only. Some report that soap residue can make it collect water. This makes it harder to light. A search may turn up more information about that.
Cotton for cosmetic purposes isn´t that expensive and can be stored without problems. I didn´t try laminating it so far but it seems to be reasonable.

I´m not trying to be negative here but dust bunnies have an unpredictable quality. That may be fine for playing but from the preparedness angle it wouldn´t be too good. As the alternatives are cheap and usually readily available it may be better using them. I confess that I went through my dust bunny and dryer lint phase before I came to this conclusion.
The sawdust with wax would require a flame to light. The sheets would pretty brittle so don´t make them too thin. When are ready to deal with these limitations it could be fine.

Sue,

Using the cat/dog hair dust bunnies may be a great idea. You may well have just thought of the ultimate survival rescue tool. The scent emitted from the burning animal hair would surely attract a group of animal rights activists and subsequently, you'd be found and rescued...

M <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

interesting idea, but wouldnt the burning plastic be toxic?

Not sure, you don't have to burn the plastic though, you could just use the cotten. It is nice to know the whole thing burns though.

If the purpose is to have a non-messy tinder source at hand..e.g. in a wallet or psk, and you don't like the vaseline-cotton options (though I personally like the vas-cotton option hands down!) I've had good luck with alcohol prep pads (e.g for cleaning an injection site, or pre-stick blood sugar testing).

They're sealed in foil, you can buy them in most Walgreens or similary stores, and I've consistently been able to get them to catch a spark and ignite well. Be sure you get the ALCOHOL prep pad. There are other kinds which won't work.

I would also be interested in testing these for myself. I have yet to find a US vendor though. Hopefully someone else will stumble across one for us.

So is the vasaline. So is the sulfer from a match.

I'm as green or greener than most people, but I figure that if I have to put out the equivelent of 10-20 minutes worth of tail pipe pollution to stay alive, I'll take the trade off.

I did this with my First Aid wallet card (laminated it with a dry cotton ball stretched out and affixed to the back.

I have burnt these in the kitchen (on top of the stove, in a disposable aluminium pan, with the fan going) with no ill effects. The plastic does burn with a somewhat oily flame, but unless you're going to put your face directly over it and inhale it directly, I can't see how it would harm you.

This type of plastic is used for airline luggage tags; I imagine if burning it in large quantities was going to be toxic, it would have to have some sort of warning label on the package.

I prefer to use the flat round ladys cotten makeup removers , is is already compressed cotten and fluffs up great when you pull it apart,
i keep 2 of them and a mini flint rod and a piece of mole skin in asmall jewlery zip lock in my wallet you dont even notice its there
Yukon

The advantages to laminating a flattened-out cotton ball to a wallet card are:

1. I'd normally be carrying the wallet card anyway, so why not?
2. It's waterproof.
3. You really don't notice it's there, any more than you would notice a credit card or library card.

The disadvantage, of course, is that you need a knife or something sharp (or strong teeth) to rip the plastic laminate open.

My solution for ripping it open is a pair of scissors. You laminate in a way that seals a rim of about 6 mm on one side cut a triangular notch about 2 mm deep in it. If you want you can cut about 1 mm straight in the corner of the notch. That gives you a breaking point which is easy to tear open.

Looks like the newly created US distributor for BCB International will be carrying these (see "Warmth & Shelter" under left-side index). You'll see on homepage banner, they hope to be operational by June 10.

bcbsurvivalusa.com

Dan

It looks like a product I picked up in Mountain Equipment Co-op a couple of months ago, identified as a "Beeswax Fire Starter" (I think - I don't have the label any more.)

I tried one of them out after reading this post (I know, I should have tested them as soon as I bought them, of course). You need to pull them apart to get them lit, but when you do, you can (with a very little bit of practice) light one with a match in under a few seconds. I tried igniting one with a Ferrocerium rod - the sparks landed and glowed brightly for a little bit but I wasn't able to ignite the firestarter with it. Again, I suppose you could do it with practice - maybe the material wasn't fuzzed out enough. (The "instructions" that came with it were useless - it showed three tiny cartoons, the last of which was of a bear warming himself by a campfire and that was about it.) After igniting it, I dropped it in a pan of water to extinguish it; then I shook and "squeegee-ed" the water off with my thumb and forefinger and lit it again. As long as it remained vertical, with the flame at the bottom, it burned well, even when wet; when it slid to the bottom of the pan, though, it slowly went out (not too surprising, I suppose.)

I think, given its light weight, it would be a useful addition to a mini-PSK, or you could even just stick a couple of them in your pocket when you go for a hike.

I bought some Tinder Cards to try. Here's what I found.

They are quite thick - equivalent to between 2 and 3 credit cards. They are also quite large, each card measuring a little over 3.5x7.5". Of course you can cut them down to whatever size you want. A small strip 1 inch by half an inch burns for about a minute, a 1" square for a minute and a half. You get 6 cards in a pack. Overall it seems like a lot for the ?2, potentially 300 fires. (The cards are scored to be broken in 3, which is why the advert says 18 strips with a narrower width.)

They are dry and slightly waxy. A Fisher Space Pen will write on them; a lesser pen won't. Their texture is layered, different to the more uniform compressed-cotton texture of Spark-Lite's Tinder-Quik. They burn to leave a solid residue with embers that glow red for quite a while. Extinguish with care.

It took me a little experimentation before I could light one with a flint rod. First you have to spread the layers, then you have to rub it with your striker to rough up some fluff, then a spark will ignite the fluff and the spreaded part will catch too. It has to be very light fluff. Tinder-Quik is much easier, less fiddly and more certain to work first time. If you already have a flame, eg a lighter, then the Tinder Card catches easily and you don't need to bother with the spreading/fluffing.

They are not advertised as waterproof and they aren't. I held one down in a glass of water for 20 minutes, and when I fished it out it was soaked through. There was no dry bit in the middle like there would be with Tinder-Quik. When wet it doesn't burn. I could just make it catch with a lighter, but then it would likely go out. I tried dunking one for just a few seconds, and it did survive that, but if you had one in your pocket when you fell in the river, you wouldn't be able to rely on lighting it when you got out. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Over-all, I see two advantages over Tinder-Quik: they are much cheaper, and they have a different form-factor. They are drier than vasaline-soaked cotton-wool.

I currently expect to use them for casual fire-lighting when camping. I use Nesbit-style stoves, and find the hex fuel blocks hard to get going with just a lighter. I had started using Tinder-Quik, but although I have lots of it (50 piece bags) I was concerned that I was using it up. I am pleased to have an alternative.

The lack of water-proofing means they cannot substitute for Quik-Tinder in a survival kit. And frankly I'd rather have two QT then a QT and a TC, even if the Tinder Card is kept dry. However, they may be worth including in places which don't suit the Quik-Tinder form-factor. Quik-Tinder has a certain irreducible thickness - if you cut it to make it thin it stops being water-proof. I am going to carry a Tinder Card in my wallet. Unfortunately they are much too thick to go into the battery compartment of my phone. I will see what other places I can find.

I am currently undecided about whether I can remove anything from my EDC as a result of adding the Tinder Card. At the moment I have a keyring spy-capsule with the spark mechanism from a lighter, which is a bit lame, and 2 QTs. I don't carry a flint rod. Ideally I'd like to omit the spy-capsule, add a flint rod (I have a nice one ready) and add a TC in my wallet. But I'm not sure. It's such a shame they aren't waterproof.

Thanks a lot for the detailed review! Sounds like I am better off just flattening out a few pieces of tinderquick. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />