im new and i want to ask how you guys make " tinder" from cottonballs and vaseline ( vaseline is the stuff people put on there skins right ? )( im a low budget guy ). and how does the end result looks like ? is it sticky ? or does it dry hard ? do you have to store it in a plastic bag or something before putting it in your PSK ? and uhm.. keep the instructions easy for me will ya, because my engish sucks ( im dutch ) and uhm.. thats it.

>>>vaseline is the stuff people put on there skins right ?<br><br>Yes. It's petroleum jelly.<br><br>There are two methods for applying it to cotton balls. <br><br>One, just dip the ball into the jelly and work it in a bit. <br><br>Two, heat up the jelly into a liquid state and dunk the ball into the liquid and squeeze "dry." Tom Ayers discussed the second method on this forum a few months ago. I haven't tried it yet but will in a few weeks before I go camping again. I'd use tweezers to dunk it and Tom cautioned to be careful when squeezing, as the liquid jelly is hot and can burn. He waited a brief moment before squeezing out the excess. But don't wait too long, as it will gel up again rather quickly.<br><br>You can store them in small plastic baggies or zip-lock bags, or in plastic film canisters. Tom also devised a method where he crammed several into a plastic drinking straw. He then crimped and seal the ends with a little heat. To use the cotton, you snip open the straw to remove. Seems east enough and I'm looking forward to trying it.<br>

I would think that caution may be in order here- heat sealing a flammable plastic tube containing petroluem jelly (closely related to napalm) sounds like it might have a downside.

We have another member from the Netherlands, Bagheera who can help you out with many questions. Tapping on monitor glass- Bagheera are you there?

thanks dude

I searched the forum messages for Tom's original post. Click here to see it.<br><br>He actually didn't suceed and was eyeing his wife's iron. I haven't seen any postings about impending divirce procedings so I guess he never tried it. :-) I would imagine that a soldering iron would work and would be far safer than a flame.

Well, I cannot comment on Tilley hats, but this is something I know about <grin>...<br><br>I don't want to start any flame wars - but petroleum jelly isn't even remotely napalm - a matter of professional minutia. Napalm was a specific name (may be trademarked) but now is used as a generic term that means thickened hydrocarbon fuel. (Think "velcro" vs "hook-and-pile-fastener") Originally made from "palmitic acid" (used for making soaps, and yes, it's from palms) + "almost gasoline". I'm intentionally leaving some parts of the process out, for obvious (I hope) reasons. <br><br>The process today is basically the same and any number of specific ingredients may be employed commercially. "Na" (Napthalene) + "palm"(palmitate) = "Napalm". (palmitate is generic-speak for salts from palmitic acid, IIRC) Napthalene is way generic from naptha, which is generic for various near-gasoline fractions (and said fractions may constitute significant portions of what we call "gasoline". For discussion's sake, napalm is about the same as thickened ("jellied") gasoline.<br><br>Jellied fuels (actually more properly termed "thickened fuels") substantially retain all the flamability characteristics as the parent fuel - like flash point. Some armored fighting vehicles use thickened fuel (diesel) to reduce the hazards resulting from getting struck by various projectiles, but the ability of the fuel to perform its function in the engine is unaffected by being thickened. I don't believe that petroleum jelly is in the same league as diesel, let alone gasoline...<br><br>Anyway, the melting point of plastic drinking straws is WAY below the ignition temperature of cotton, petroleum jelly, or the combo. But don't use a bic lighter or any other flame to seal <grin>. A seal-a-meal type device is too hot/too concentrated to do the job for me, so I gave up. The straws work fine left open; I abandoned efforts to seal them as it's too much effort for too little gain.<br><br>As to the original question - try various amounts of petroleum jelly. They all ignite easily from spark or flame. Small amounts of petroleum jelly in the cotton ball is barely palpable, ignites readily, and burns long enough to do the job. Large amounts - such as dipping in molten petroleum jelly and squeezing out the excess - leaves a sticky cotton ball that ignites just as readily and burns for a significant amount of time - long enough to dry out and ignite wet kindling. No matter how much one uses, the cotton ball must be teased out - fluffed up - to readily catch the sparks. The key is to work the petroleum jelly completely thru the cotton ball so that every strand of cotton has a film of the pj on it. The EASIEST way to do this is the dip-and-squeeze method, but one then must package the result as it's a somewhat gooey mess - hence my straw suggestion. Oh - use a double-boiler method for melting the jelly, just as one would for melting candle wax - and BTW, melted petroleum jelly is much LESS likely to ignite on the stove than melted candle wax, I am QUITE certain - empirically determined by moi and others. There is greater separation between the melting and ignition points of pj than there is for candle wax.<br><br>Hope that helps.<br><br>Regards,<br><br>Tom

Tom, you're beginning to scare me! ;-)<br><br>Re: sealing straws.<br><br>I can't imaine it taking a lot of heat to seal an end of a plastic straw shut. I may try the soldering iron as I have several spare tips I can sacrifice. And I'll try heating up the a scrape piece of copper tubing I have left over from a plumbing project as a "die."

No flame wars from me... was that pun intentional? :-)<br><br>Ok, I plead ignorance... at least to us non-chemists, " ("jellied") gasoline" (from your description of napalm) sounds a great deal like "petroleum jelly" (Vaseline)... <br><br> …but I haven't tried defoliating the back yard with the stuff... yet... so maybe not.<br><br>I only intended to inject a note of caution into a discussion on heat-sealing improvised containers of what is presumably pretty flammable stuff... that is what we want it for, because it’s flammable, yes? Personally, I'd be really hesitant to use a soldering iron- aside from any possible risk, I think it would just melt the straw too quickly to control. I might point out that it's just possible that the ignition temperature of the polystyrene straw is lower than that of the Vaseline itself, but the results of reaching either would probably be pretty indistinguishable.<br><br>Two trivia items this brings to mind: <br><br>I once met a guy who, with what seemed to amount to glass-blowing techniques, could use a plastic straw and a candle to produce tiny pitchers, cups and saucers.. pretty impressive, at least in person. He used the thicker, striped straws, not the very thin transparent ones used in fast food joints today.<br><br>The difference in pronunciation between "baseline" and "Vaseline" is a good test to see whether you're dealing with rule-based or dictionary-based text-to-speech conversion. They only differ in the initial letter, and rules for “b” and “v” are almost identical, so if the software pronounces them both correctly, it's almost certainly dictionary-based. That's pretty symptomatic of the reasons why, along with increased storage and processor power that favors look-ups, rule-based is rapidly fading away these days.<br><br>So, it’s useless… hence the name "trivia". :-)<br>

>>was that pun intentional?<< Yes :-)