Well, tonight I concluded a test that was seven years in the making! Well, maybe not on purpose though. Back in April of 2011 I vacuum sealed a pair of Weber grill lighting cubes. For whatever reason images don't really work here so here's a link:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/m2sKgS9.jpg?1[/img]


Years ago I mailed out a few of my first vacuum sealed items for fire making. Maybe some of you still have them! If any of you have used the Weber cubes sold as grill starters you probably learned that they're 1) identical to WetFire and 2) volatile. If you leave them unwrapped you only have a few weeks before they're useless, something applies to WetFire as well in my experience. I figured that if you sealed them well they' probably keep for a long while, perhaps indefinitely. So I sealed up a bunch into various packages which I tried over regular intervals. But it seems a few got misplaced or rather forgotten. So last week while I was digging through some stored stuff looking for a couple of folders I came upon a couple of the Weber cubes that I sealed in April of 2011. I included the date written on square of foil inside the pack.

Would they work after seven years in a regular 4 mil food back? I wanted to find out! So I went out to the back yard to my fire pit to test them out.

I cut a small notch partially through the edge of the bag when I sealed them so they could easily be opened without a knife. I could tell the seal was intact as the pack was very firm. Opening the envelop I found the Weber cubes still felt oily and had the familiar smell off the new ones. I used my Mora to shave the first cube into a pile to shavings to try to light with a fire steel. Not knowing what to expect I was mildly surprised that it immediately burst into flames with the first strike! The pile burned pretty quickly, no surprise as it was just a loose pile. So I used a lighter to ignite the intact cube. It also lit readily. Unmolested and left to burn it went for about seven minutes before it was burned down.

All in all I'm pretty impressed. I wasn't sure if a regular bag would prevent all the volatile chemicals from leaching out of the cube but it worked just fine. After testing several bags I've been pretty satisfied but certainly this test clinched it for me. I consider my repacked Weber cubes to be a pretty reliable option for emergency fire starting.