I finally tried dyer lint as tinder and all I can say is "WOW!" So easy! One scrape on the fire steel and away she went. Now I'm thinking of adding it to all my kits.

What's your favorite tinder for your psk?

I used to be a cotton balls and vaseline kinda girl, then I moved to quick tinder, both added to a stash of birch bark. I'm jonesin for the dryer lint now. My hubby's been stashing it for some time, "just in case". I love that man!

belly button lint

I've been using Tinder-Quik and it's worked great for me.

I'm sticking with the vaseline cotton balls. Lightweight, multi-use, lights easy, and burns hot.

Vaseline-infused cotton balls:

1. extremely effective
2. inherently waterproof
3. compact
4. lightweight
5. cheap

That is a rare and valuable combination of features. Dryer lint is great but you have to go to lengths to keep it dry.

Cotton and Petro Jelleh. Knowing that dryer lint is most likely 99% Synthetic materials, Human Hair And pet fur I stay away from it <.<.

That is a little gross, isn't it!

Living in the Pacific Northwest were it’s wet, damp and nasty a good portion of the year and almost always when you‘d actually need the warmth of a fire to survive; I’d answer have sufficient tinder with you and preferably a piece of two of fatwood to help get the kindling you’ve made going. I’ve had good luck getting a variety of different tinder going, it’s getting a sustaining fire going that takes lots of time and work and in some weather conditions luck. And always have enough to start over again if needed. I usually have a cut down chunk or two of fatwood, some Vaseline soaked cotton balls, wet fire and some of the tinder that’s in Doug’s kit in my pack and far more in my SUV.

Everyday, I carry cotton balls and Burt's Beeswax Lip Balm. Sometimes I'll carry Vaseline also. Sometimes the cotton balls will be pre-mixed with the fuel, but usually not.

Guess I keep it simple. I've carried chunks of Coghlan's fire starter sticks in every kit and every pocket for nearly twenty-five years. Pretty low tech, I guess; but it's started fires, pre-heated white gas stoves, gone through the wash, been dunked in rivers, and never let me down. Don't know if it would take a spark from a firesteel though; I guess I should work out that angle.

As always, YMMV.

http://www.coghlans.com/products/fire-sticks-7940

1. Vaporised butane gas as in disposable butane lighter. Ignites from a small spark even.
2. Petroleum jelly and cotton is always in any kit I've made.
3. Maya dust (or any other highly resinous sawdust) mixed glued together into wafers with petroleum jelly and dipped in paraffin work too.
4. Alcohol sanitizing gel (from my FAK).

-jh

I'm going to keep the quick tinder, cotton balls and birch bark, but add a little hit of dyer lint to the kits. it's just so easy with the firesteel. i'll have to play around with storage and quanity.

How about just keeping the dryer lint after doing a load of whites, as this will be cotton, and mixing in the petroleum jelly. Any difference between that and regular cotton balls? I would think the lint would be finer, but maybe not after mixing in the petroleum jelly. Good quick experiment to try.

I prefer cotton balls over dryer lint. I have found cotton balls are easier to light, are cleaner and have multiple uses. There is no practical price difference because cotton balls are so inexpensive. Dryer lint provides a good learning experience for fire starting generally, but I carry cotton balls.

I would say fatwood in various forms and Tinder-Quik.

PS: I am not exactly sure what PSK stands for. Pocket Survival Kit or Personal Survival Kit? Thanks...

PSK, to me means "pocket survival kit". I've always been prone to thinking of a "personal survival kit" as a combo of pocket kit, EDC and/or whatever other kits you are have with you. (Hiking pack, camping bacpack, GHB, BOB, etc...)

Reguarding my pocket kit, I just added a couple more tinder-quicks and a wad of dryer lint, rolled into my blaze orange balloon. I also realized I had room for the flint match from the box of tinder-quick so I thew that in too.

I also made a new tinder kit for my edc bag. (My pocket kit is usually in there, but often gets carried on my body when I leave the edc bag at home or in the car in favour of something like my hiking or camping pack.) Shoved in an orange coglan's match safe, I put some strike anywhere matches, a birthday candle, some dryer lint, cotton balls and 3 tinder-quicks.

I have had inconsistent results with dryer lint; I've experience it lighting extremely easily, but I've also had some that just didn't want to light.

I think its effectiveness is dependant on the materials which were being dried before it was collected. I guess if I were to put some aside for a fire starting kit, I'd want to test the batch it came from to make sure it was the super flammable type.

That said, I've started using cotton balls when camping with good results; they are now my preferred method for fire starting. The only other type I carry right now are the Tinder Quicks that came with the Ritter PSP.

Quick question Anyone here know how well the coghlans Tinder lights up with a spark? The Oily wax chunks with cotton in um tinder.

I got some a while back to test out. They work fine, but they require a little prep work. As in, you have to pull it apart a bit to expose the cotton fibers.


Personally, I'm still a huge fan of Cotton/Vaseline tinder. You can buy big bags of raw ginned cotton for pretty cheap, you throw a little Vaseline in, kneed it up, and you're set for a long time.

The trick is not to use too much Vaseline. If you use too much you end up with a slimy mess that is difficult to light.

I use/have in my kits: Magnalium powder(coarse grit),Tinder quiks,fatwood,Pj cotton,candles,waxpaper,rubber,plastic& the means to make feathersticks.These are my favorite PSK tinders!

While very efficient I stay away from dryer lint as my source for it has a tad too much dog and cat fur in it and thus has an unpleasant aroma...

Cotton balls and PJ and Quick Tinder don't stink.

It's interesting that nobody has mentioned a magnesium bar. I have yet to get good enough with Mg such that I would feel comfortable relying on it. Mg burns so quickly that I need something else there that will catch fire and last longer. Mg is more like a catalyst to help get other tinder going.

Good point ireckon. I keep a mag bar in all my kits as a back-up. Very dependable. I tend to think of the magnesium as a tinder helper rather than tinder. Of course, it's got the addd benefit of an attached the ferro rod - another way to make sparks.

I have at least two mag bars, sitting quietly in my gear closet. I never used them consistently either. There are alternatives (dryer lint, cotton balls) that are just as good, even more consistent, and slightly lighter, for that matter.

I also like to carry a bit of alcohol based hand sanitizer. Besides keeping me hygienic, it also is a great fire starter - even works as straight fuel in an alcohol stove.

I admit that I'm "magnesium challenged"...maybe it's supposed to be easy to use but I don't have much luck with it. It takes forever to get a decent pile of shavings, then they like to blow away. And when they do actually light they seem to "flash" burn before I can get anything done with them. And it's not a cheapo Dones bar, this is a big soft block from Firesteel.com. I even got a bag of mag turnings from eBay; those suckers need exposure to naked flame.

No, for me it's 1) Tinder Qwik, 2) cotton balls (naked, waxed or PJ'd), 3) fatwood and/or 4) Weber grill lighter cubes. To light them I've usually got a lighter, a firesteel, a Spark-lite and matches. What can I say...I'm a pyro!

BTW, forgot jute cord. I've had good luck with it, but it does seem to wick up moisture out of the air fairly easily. If I have jute it's gotta be sealed in something.

Phaedrus,
I posted something for the "magnesium challenged".
Look up my post "Doan Magnesium Firestarter" from 01/31/2010
This might help you rediscover the benefits of the magbar.
Hope this helps, my friend.

Pharaoh.

Cotton balls soaked in Coleman White Gas stored in a used Granger G-Wax tin.

You get a jet of yellow flame about 2 feet high which burns for about a minute from a single cotton ball.

At the moment I am using tinder quiks. I tried dryer lint before and was disappointed in its performance. Luckily it was not an emergency when I tried it out. Perhaps it was from a batch with a lot of synthetic material. There was also not much of it there so perhaps there just wasn't enough of it. I had it filling the space left in the top of my match case. The tinder quiks, however, fit nicely in the same space so I replaced the lint with the tinder quiks and have been carrying them in all my kits since. I have noticed a lot of mention of cotton balls with Vaseline and would really like to try that out.

It doesn’t qualify as tinder, but I also try to keep a thin piece of corrugated-type cardboard in there (you can cut these to size from big mac boxes and some of the dominoes boxes as well as many retail store boxes – I have taken to checking every box I come across and squirreling the good ones away). Not only does it serve as an added boost to get larger kindling going, it also serves as a buffer between kit items where needed (for example to protect a water bag from being punctured by the end of a roll of wire). As always no affiliations and YMMV.

I've tried many different ones... I'm a big fan of Tinder Quik and Cotton balls with Vaseline. Sometimes I also use jute twine.

Mg is finicky. Good to add to another tinder tho. Birch bark is also great with another tinder.

With dryer lint, your best bet is to NOT use a fabric softener sheet. The residue can often make the link NOT burn or not burn well. Natural fibers, as someone else mentioned, works best.

I've tried all of these in winter conditions with moderate winds, approximating typical fire starting conditions.

Just wanted to state a side of warning with the often coghlans brand mag bars that the ferro rods are held in with a drop or two of glue and with enough force the ferro rod can be rocketed off the mag bar and in sufficient foliage lost.

I am a big fan of using cotton balls loaded up with petroleum jelly.

Doing several demonstratons at a sportsman show recently my ignited cotton stayed lit for an average of 4 minutes, the longest was 6 minutes.

Still, I keep a bunch of different fire starter materials in a zip lock bag that goes in my pack.

Blake
www.outdoorquest.com

Although I seldom use "tinder" of the type you are talking about for fires that count, I carry and have used both Tinder Quick and cotton balls with Vaseline with great effect for test fires with spark type starters in all types of conditions.

I don't use these types of tinder because I usually (except when practicing other techniques) light my fires with a match (occasionally I do use a Bic). Using very small pine twigs or fuzz sticks I rarely need anything more. If things are wet, I use a 3x3 square of old t shirt material that is soaked in wax.

Respectfully,

Jerry

My experience has been similar.

I rely on the Tinder Qwik, as I find it reliable and non-messy. I bought a bag of 50 from somewhere a while back. I also have some tinder card, which I tend to use more often because it's not as good (eg not water-proof) but good enough and I might as well use it up.

Think of the magnesium as something similar to the head of a match. It can help to convert a small spark into a very brief flame to light something a little bigger and longer burning.

Don't count on it to do anything else.

Anyone tried petroleum jelly and jute twine? Or wax and jute twine?

I haven't had any luck with waxing jute twine...somehow I'm getting too much wax soaking in and it won't burn. Jute works very well but sometimes it's hard to keep it dry, and it really has to be dry. So far, PJ cotton balls, waxed cotton and Tinder Qwik have been my best options. Plain cotton balls also work well but burn pretty fast. The round cotton facial cleansing pads also work pretty well.

BTW, the Weber grill lighting cubes are fantastic tinder but have been a little hard to work with until now. The problem is that when exposed to air they seem to "corrode" or the volatile flammable part evaporates. Cubes that have been open for a month are very light and will hardly burn at all. And they leach thru some kinds of plastic that I've tried to store them in.

But I might have solved the storage issue. Last nite I vacuum sealed a box of them into various size packages and with different techniques. I did a few single packs, and a few muli-packs (either 3 or 4 to a bag). Some of them I vacuumed "naked" and some I wrapped in tin foil first. And most of them are double vacced, that is one vacuum sealed bag sealed into another bag. This should hopefully eliminate leaks and preserve the cubes. I dated them all so that I can monitor them for degradation over time.

For those who aren't familiar with the Weber cubes they appear to be virtually identical to WetFire Tinder, except that you can get a 24 count package for about half what an 8 count of Wet Fire costs. If my DIY packaging holds up then I will definitely have a new "go to" survival and camping tinder.

I'll try to get some pictures of the posted later tonite.

Well, no time like the present! Here's some pics. Sorry in advance for the blue hues...I had been taking pics indoors and forgot to change the camera settings.

What is tinder card? This is the first I've heard of it?

Our Scout troop recently gave me a woven jute survival bracelet as a thank you. It looks just like the gorgeous paracord ones the guys around here make. Too nice to ruin just to try it out so I'll have to find some more. I've never tried it. Am I right to assume I use it like tinder-quick, and spread it out to make sort of a little nest to catch the spark?

Its a wax impregnated fibrous cardboard. Instructions on use are demonstrated here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stlk1IrplAk

Its also a quite inexpensive tinder and can be stored in a PSK in a more compact fashion compared to waxed cotton balls.

http://www.surplusandoutdoors.com/shop/s...our-362407.html

another favorite tinder is bicycle repair rubber tyre solution such as a tube of Halfords Bike Tyre rubber solution.

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/store...tegoryId_228377

Thanks Liath_Mor! I'll definitely check it out!

Dryer Lint

char cloth for sure!

Thanks Paul and Kevin. I've never tried char cloth so it's on my To Do list!