Fire Starting Kit and Methods

From reviewing numerous "fire starting" kit on the various bushcraft forums, it appears that most of them contain an assortment of different tinder items such as, tinder quick tabs, cotton balls, strips of rubber, pieces of fat wood, esbit tabs, char cloth, etc. While I understand why one may want to have more than one way to get a spark such as a spark light, bic lighter, or flint and steel, I do not understand why one would need the various types of tinder.

Specifically, what does a char cloth, rubber, esbit tabs etc. do that tinder quick or cotton balls do not? Isn't there one or two items that would work 100% of the time under all conditions and if so what should it be.

Am I missing something or are all of the different tinders just more toys to play with?

A worthwhile question. Ask what each type of fire starter / tinder can do other than start fire. Ask what unique fire-starting characteristics of each type are. Then decide for yourself what mix, if any, makes sense in your situation.

Play with every kind you can get your hands on!

Edit: About once a year the Sacramento Tracker Group gets together with every kind of spark and fire starter and every knid of tinder we can get our hands on to play / experiment. Maybe you can get some friends together to do the same [or join us if you are in the area].

Get real world introductions to what all this stuff looks like, how it acts and works. Form your own information base and make informed decisions based on direct personal experience.

One that has never failed me is Boy Scout Firestarter - white gas. But be sure not to use too much.

If you are in a situation where you can't gather good tinder or such tinder is soaked from rain, it is a good idea to have a stock laid by to get your fire ignited. As you can see, there are many different kinds. Next to BSF, I have always liked Utah Juniper bark. It is certainly worthwhile knowing about some that are not real obvious, like rubber and steel wool, just two of the many types with which I have no personal experience.

I think there is no absolutely perfect tinder. Some tinder catches spark easily but doesn´t burn for a long time or is not so waterproof, some can deteoriate but is otherwise great, some cannot be stored near food, ...
It pays to carry several kinds of tinder. Even if you practice making a fire a lot and test your tinder you still never really know what could go wrong (e.g. some waterproof tinder turns out not to be so waterproof or your tinder deteoriates). Backups and variety is the name of the game. At least for me.

For us off-road motorcyclists; a gasoline soaked rag almost always works.
I also like cotton balls sprayed with WD-40.
Agree with raptor, redundancy is good.

char cloth will catch a weak spark from say a traditional flint and steel or a flint spark off the back of a carbon knife - none of the others will


esbit/tinderquick and cottonballs (with petroleum jelly) will so similar things but have different burn times allowing the use to select based on conditions (wet and rainy and need fire fast then use the firestarter w/ longest burn time)

rubber I assume is for generating black smoke for signalling

tinder quick will have a short burn time, esbit will burn over 10 minutes very intensely and can start fire under worst conditions w/ minimal preparation

other tinders: jute twine and un-used tampon (the cotton torpedo inside)

I use rubber, either rubber bands or a piece of inner tube, to create a longer lasting flame to dry slightly wet tinder/kindling. You really can't light it without a lighter, but once it catches stand back. If it is placed in the center of a pile of twigs, it dries the twigs above with heat while the twigs below catch the "drippings" and eventually also catch on fire.

I always carry cotton balls/petroleum jelly in a film canister.

And the trick birthday candles, the kind that can't be blown out, are a good one time use firestarter also.

Firelighting kits have to do two things:
1) Supply a flame. This is where cotton wool balls, tinder-Quick and maya wood come in to their own. They catch easy from a spark or flame but burn quickly.

2) Provide tinder. Esbit cubes, ranger bands etc fall into this category.
Most neophyte students of survival can be pardoned for thinking that there will always be tinder and kindling availible for a classic fire lay. Unfortunatly real life is not that convenient.

A good analogy is that the fire lighting kit is a toolbox. With different tools for each part of the job.

*keeping a straight face* There are no toys in our survival and camping gear. This is all real world, serious, life saving material.

*grins* A lot of is there are toys in the box. But there are reasons for the difference. If I've got a flame, but everything is the box is wet for some reason, birch bark. Steel wool under those circumstances will catch a spark, and heat enough for char cloth to dry and catch if it is only a little damp. If the char cloth is dry, it will take a spark on it's own, and it will prime things like cotton balls, which in turn are enhanced with some pj. Magnesium flake burns freaky hot but also freaky fast- use that with found tinder that isn't quite dry enough to take a spark.

If I need something to fill the gap between tinder and kindling, then esbits, triox, candles and big blobs of pj come into play. I can also use any of these to warm water over. Rubber burns and burns very well, but not as hot as some of the others, so you combine it with less than optimal tinder to get your kindling lit.

Just like a tackle box, a lot of what is there is just because it is cool, but when you need that one right lure or fly, you need it. Just like when you need that one right fire starter.

Of course, the easy way is a bundle of three highway flares or a thermite grenade. With those, you can get anything burning.

Addendum to my last: If you want a thorough understanding of why you should always have a decent fire lighting kit on you just watch any episode of Survivorman.

The fact is if you have fuel for a fire, you have tinder and kindling. It just takes knowledge, experience and confidence to find the tinder and kindling.

Traditionally tinder was carried to save time and energy, as it still is. But, kindling is so easily bought nowadays that it has become the norm to carry it and use for every fire one starts.

It seems that the art of finding and preparing tinder is a dying one. And, there seems to be a misnomer on the internet that gives the impression that tinder should be carried because it can’t be found or very difficult to find.

The tinder I personally don’t like are those that are manufactured specifically for the propose. I don’t like spending money to burn even if it is a couple of £/$. Many of them have a short shelf life and often fail to work. I much prefer to collect natural tinder’s on my travels.

I light my fires using a spark so cotton wool is perfect for times when I just want a fire quickly. If it is a real emergency, the weather is crap and I don’t have time to mess around then the match case and a strip of inner tube comes out.

Addendum to my addendum:
Just watched Survivorman, Sierra Nevada Mountains. He just used his L.E.D. headtorch to create a fire. Short circuited the torch to ignite the cotton wool from his first aid kit. Good idea as far as it goes, but he destroyed the torch to do it (burnt up in fire).

Disposable lighter $1.
Head torch $10 minimum.
Hummm, perhaps not such a good idea.

Fire lighting using a torch has been taught in military survival courses for years. Do you need a torch to survive? No you don’t. Fire is a lot more important than a torch in most situations.

A $10+ torch is cheep compared to life.

Put a 4 inch piece of nichrome wire in your PSK (or right inside the torch). Use it for short circuiting. And any battery will easily survive your barbaric fire making procedure.

I myself have empty snus cans filled with cotton balls and Vaseline®.

The main difference between tinders is burn time and pure heat.

PJ cotton balls catch pretty easily and burn for a while, more important here in Oklahoma due to the non stop wind which will disperse the heat very quickly.

I like Bic® lighters and PJCBs for a couple reasons.

1. Reliable
2. Cheap

I've used mag bars, they're okay, but they require time and work for a short duration burn, they're great for longevity but I'd rather have a separate mag bar and fire steel.

White gas works, but now we're talking extremely easy to vaporize not to mention a possible rash if it spills.

Alcohol can be used in the same capacity and has the added bonus of sterilization... and if you splurge on drinkable stuff a possible morale boost.

So many kinds of tinder, I like stuff I can do easily with one hand and low light and tired.

extra gas is dangerous, and you could spill it on yourself, and it likes to vaporize.

alcohol vaporizes easily too much is a waste and again an accidental spill could mean a burn.

I could go on for a bit, but I think we all get the idea, several sources to fit the need.

now there is a statement we should all think about"here in Oklahoma"..i'll bet that among ten of us there are about nine separate fire starting,and keeping going needs.what i need is a good hot start in a wet pine woods.once a fire is going i'll have heaps of Red and White pine along with Black Spruce and Birch.so if i can get something going i'm good..i seldom even need to split wood to get something that will burn as the sticks and branches are filled with pitch..i assume some places will have hardwoods or lots of softwood like Aspen that will be hard to start and keep going..i've camped in Aspen glades and thats the worse wood to try and make a fire with unless its bone dry.
what if you are someplace where there is little of no wood!!.
to high,to dry or even too wet,i'm thinking swamps here.so maybe a fire kit for the piney woods is a world away from a hardwood forest out East..any ideas??

The possibility of there being no wood is why I have gone to carrying some sort of fuel and stove with me - usually a gas cartridge stove, but often an alcohol unit, or, if it is going to be fairly cold, a liquid fuel stove. You don't have to worry about whether there may be fuel available, or if it can burn. Your meal is ready sooner, and your campsite is cleaner.

Ditto.

i was thinking,survival, not camping.so you are down to just the kit having used up or lost everything else and the kit better have the gear for making a fire in your local environment.a Bic and a candle stub might be fine for dry and cool hill country out west but in the boreal forests you might want a can of something to light wet,mossy wood and someone off the Appalachian Trail might put a paper match to a pile of dry leaves and get a bonfire in a few minutes while the guy in a swamp is wading around looking for dry ground.so it's kit arranged to your needs and not something off the shelf.

Canoedogs I see what you are saying but it’s not the apparatuses used to lighting a fire that is important. It is more about gaining the knowledge of building a fire in different environments, using different materials. I know some woods are a real pig to start a fire with but also know that if I prepare the fire correctly I can still use that wood.

I have used a steel and cotton wool; matches and inner tube from the jungle to the arctic. Candles are great in all environments too, you just have to realise the candle needs to be sheltered from the wind. If you protect your chosen fire lighting method and tinder from moisture most will light a fire in any circumstance.

There are several usable methods. Besides carrying a bic lighter my favoured back up method is to also carry a flint/steel and small pack of tampons. They come individually wrapped in cellophane that helps keep them dry and can be 'teased' open to a good size. They also light every time from a spark. You can coat them in a petroleum jelly type product that will make them burn a little longer if you want but they work ok without that.

A few things that may have already been implied or stated by other posts:

1) Burn time of various tinders. If your wood is very wet you may need a tinder that will burn long enough to dry out your kindling enough to get a fire going.
2) Knowledge = survival. The more you are exposed to, the more likely you will be able to light a fire under different situations and under very adverse conditions. Limit your exposure and you may limit your survival.
3) Some people pack certain types of tinder because they also serve other purposes - for example some pack PJCBs because they can also use it to sooth chapped lips.

That said, I suspect most everyone has a preferred method (or methods) they usually use as well as preferred materials. I am usually carrying a spark-lite, bic lighter, magnesium bar and flint, and strike anywhere matches. For tinder I am carrying tinder-quik, candle, paper and a thin piece of cardboard. There may also be a cotton ball or two as well; I will use these for packing material to occupy extra space and quiet any rattling (although now that I think about it, I will probably just add some more tinder quik instead). Whatever, KEEP IT DRY.


I am a bit surprised no one pointed out the obvious advantage to a piece of rubber; it's waterproof, but not so much tinder as kindling.

Speaking of matches...I just found out that "strike anywhere" matches don't after a while. I've had about 30 in a plastic pill bottle stored behind my laptop and I tried two last night and THEY WOULDN'T STRIKE!!! I guess they have a shelf life. So they are out of my kit.

Almost everything in your kit has a shelf life.

Ferro rods decompose from contact with atmospheric moisture. Batteries get stuid with age to. All of your meds will reach the point they don't anything. Even bullion cubes can get blue and furry. Anything rubber or leather will suffer dry rot if forgotten, metal containers and blades will rust.

Matches should be swapped every year or every other year if they've been dipped. All of your food items (other than MREs, lifeboat rations, and freeze drieds) and batteries should be rotated annually.