I carry rubber tube around my zippo lighter. Gives me an emergency firestarter, and slows the rate of fuel evaporation.
I carry a "Silky" saw with me. Great for doing track improvements and fire wooding.
Light cord, lighter, rubber strips plus candle stub are also carried.
@hutchk. Thanks for your advice on budget firestarters
I concur that their firestarters have the advantage that they do not smell.
But I do ask, 'how do you get them to burn?'.
A cold, damp night at Snowy Hut with almost universally wet firewood:
I tried lighting the firestarters from a match. No go.
I tried adding them on top of newspaper and lighting the fire that way. The paper burns out, but the firestarters remained resolutely unaffected.
I finally managed to find enough dry tinder to get some small pencil sized sticks burning and, bit by but, drying wood over the flames as I went, finally got a bed of embers. At that stage only did the budget firestarters actually catch fire.
@madpom,
Try shaving/carving the surface of the wax/sawdust blocks with a knife to create lots of little burrs to act as wicks.
This works well on larger branches too to help them catch alight.
Like a lot of people here it seems, my favourite firestarter is a good length (10-15 cm) of bike inner tube. I also carry carry a couple of tealight candles and hand sanitiser (which is 60-70% ethanol) as dual-purpose items that can be used for fire lighting as well. Plastic bags and newspaper thickly coated with vaseline also burn well...
I've have also used a gas stove to get a fire started once (basically to get the tinder and kindling and small sticks dry first) but it did feel somewhat risky...
Often the best firewood available are the dead branches that are still attached to trees rather than those lying on the ground wet and rotten.
Yeah ... but the reason I carry firelighters is so that I don't have to much around doing all that stuff!
Beehive firelighters are great. You only have to wave a match near one and they are away. More expensive than budget
cotton wool balls soaked in meths or vegatable oil work well as well. Easier to light than inner tube less smelly but more messy. Ive got a couple of beehive style fire lighters in the survival kit though but have never needed to use them. Can nearly always find some dry grass which burns 10 times better than newspaper
Glycerin and KMn04, works well, even in the rain. In fact I have always found a flick of water starts it faster. Just don't mix it with formalin, very noxious primitive form of tear gas.
