Greetings, all...
I bought a spark-lite and the associated cotton tinder last week. I went through two of the little cotton rolls before I figured out I had to fluff the cotton on the end. Left with half the supply of tinder, I began to wonder what else would work. Cotton balls worked. Alcohol in a pepsi-can stove lit up easily with the spark-lite. Steel wool, maybe. Nothing else. Not even dryer lint.

Now, I'm a two matches or less kinda guy and have no experience with sparks and tinder. I usually start fires with stuff much too big for a spark.

So the question is: What sort of tinder (natural or manmade) have you used sucessfully with a spark-lite? I guess I am wondering whether I am up the creek with a spark-lite if I have run out of cotton weenies during an emergency.

BTW, my wife, an avid sewing person, thinks that cotton roll tinder that came with the spark-lite is nothing more than cut up (insert name I can't remember here) that can be had for $0.29 a foot at the local fabric store.

Thanks in advance for any experiences you might share.

Try a search. We have had MANY a discussion about tinder. ;-)

And no, you are not out of luck. :-)

-john

i've only used mine on cotton balls to save the tinderquik's (which is supposed to be wax-impregnated so it will light when wet). fyi, backpackinglight.com has 50 packs of tinderquik's. i'd be curious what this fabric store stuff is...

Blackswan ,
As someone said, do a search and there are some interesting threads.

I don;t have a sparklight yet - I want to get two of them. I use a Doan's magnesium flint striker and a knife (I don;t use the magnesium). You can buy cotton swabs in disk form - they're about 1- 1/2" in diam. x 1/8" thick. If you warm vaseline up to where it's nice and maleable, you can spread it on both sides of these disks. Or, soak them in parrafin oil. Then, cut the disks in half, roll them up into a small "log", roll that in small strips of waxpaper, and seal the last of the "roll" with a small dab of hot glue.

These will ignite with a good spark, even on blustery days... and they'll burn for a solid 60 seconds or more.

Steel wool (super fine 0000) is good too, especially if saturated with parrafin oil, though it won;t burn for more than a few seconds - enough to get some dry tinder going.

I think the key to any method you choose is preparation.

Also, you're NOT out of luck without your tinder quicks. A good flint sparker (and I've heard the sparklight is a good one), coupled with good preparation and patience, will start dry tinder. It's not easy, but it can be done - I've done it a couple of times sucessfully and if I can do it <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> so can you.

"i'd be curious what this fabric store stuff is..."

I think what you are talking about is Cotton Batting. Cotton batting is the matt of cotton fiber that you use as the "stuffing" in a quilt. Please excuse my ignorance of sewing terms, but Batting is the stuff that is used for "stuffing". Sort of like a loose cotton felt.

I have never tried it as tinder, but now that you mention it, it probably would work. You will also find polyester batting and poly blends that would probably not work.

Funny, I just recently went through this myself. Use 100% cotton balls, with vaseline rubbed onto them (about a fingertip full, with the large cotton balls). Coat the outside, seal in something. When you use them, break the cotton ball open, to get to the dry center. Shoot the sparks into it. It will catch, and the vaseline will keep it lit for quite some time.
I just experimented with this last week, and did it incorrectly. I asked here AFTER the fact. Now, I'm passing this on to you <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Oldsoldier: I also tried cotton balls with vaseline without sucess. Too liberal with the goop! Your tip is a good one, I'll try it.

Morph,
Thanks for the tip.
I went with my wife to the fabric store last night to check this stuff out. Turns out it is "piping cord", 100% cotton. It does indeed resemble the tinder-quiks but is a long rope-like affair. The good news is that it is not $0.29 a foot, it is $0.29 a yard! So I "splurged" and bot a yard. The bad news it is vastly inferior to the tinder-quiks. Oh, it lights up OK, but there just isn't as much cotton (less dense per unit volume) as in the tinder-quiks, so it did not burn long when I cut it to the same size as a tinder-quik. Might work well if one dipped half of it in paraffin.

I took your advice and did a search. I found many alternate CARRIED tinders that people use with the spark-lite, nothing really about impromtu tinder that could be used in either an urban or wilderness environment and that had been tested with the spark-lite. I guess I need to backup and learn the basics of starting fires with tinder now. Pyromania is good...

I bought a flint/steel combo at REI a few weeks ago and tried it with a few items around the house with good success - tissue paper and drier lint both worked for me.

Like you I also wanted to try some natural tinder. So while out on one of my dirt bike rides last week I grabbed a plume of Pampas grass and stuffed that in my backpack and brought it home.

I stripped a bunch of the material from the top of the plume and piled it into a little spot on the sidewalk and with garden hose handy I set to work with the flint and striker.

Wow! I almost burned my fingers. The stuff lights very easily and burns hot and fast. The little stalks that hold the plume material then burns with a more sustained glow that you can blow on to keep going for a while.

That stuff grows all over here in So Cal. I figured that I'd look for more different materials on my next ride and continue to experiment until I've developed a reasonable list of alternates and improved my starting skills.

I'll only bring the materials home to practice in a safe environment however because one has to be really careful around here when starting a fire as the whole area is basically a tinder keg waiting to go off.