On the subject of tinder

I'm trimming a few trees on my property. There is pine, cedar, Japanese red maple, elm, and chestnut to trim. Most of the wood is live and thin. Some of the limbs are 4" diameter, and going down to the size of a toothpick. For whatever reason, I burned about two hours this afternoon collecting dry Elm toothpicks and putting them in a medium sized box to use as tinder. Anything thinner than a thumb went into that box. Lots of little pieces.

I thought maybe the wet pine branches would dry out into something that has sap in it that would go up quick. That could be good for starting fires, so I kept some of that in another box. Then I have a pile of green cedar tips, they almost look like webbing. Once dry, would they make good tinder?

I have a bottomless supply of dryer lint and boxes from my wife's Amazon habit. Am I wasting my time? I have a little time on my hands right now so it's no skin off my back if I spend a day or two collecting little sticks for the tinder box.

I just think it's cool that I can walk around on my own property and collect what I need to start fires from stuff I would otherwise throw in the garbage. What do you think?

Fred Wright said:

Agree with the mention of packing, or Kraft paper. Lights easily and burns well. Also, most carton paper is good for fire starting... cereal boxes, beer cartons etc. Never did have much luck with corrugated carton ~ hard to get started and doesn't burn very well.

We have used brush for kindling for many years. I've never done any cutting or splitting for tinder purposes. There's plenty of it left from felling trees. Just pile it, chain or cable it and drag it to the edge of the yard where it will dry.

I usually pull a few limbs and branches at a time and lay 'em by the wood stacks so they're easy to get to. The little stuff may be snapped by hand, the larger can be cut with a limbing or little electric saw. These make nice starter wood. There's a kid's toybox in the living room with a plastic container inside, we store kindling in it. Works great.

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I've had good luck with corrugated cardboard. I take a box and break it down. The small side stays whole, the long side gets ripped into two or three pieces with a box cutter. Then I roll the strips up into a tight spiral, and those go on the bottom of the stove. Then I stack wood on top. When I light the cardboard, I do it from the lowest curl I can find and let it rise up until the face is mostly burning. Then I blow on it to get the center burning all the way through the spiral to the other side. At some point I had the idea to shred the ends of the spiral by slicing into the cardboard on one side, and leaving the shreds facing out of the spiral on one face. That improved the start quite a bit.

Then again, I have an old pre-EPA so it'll burn a lot of stuff that would never see the inside of a modern stove.

It sounds like using brush as a firestarter is a workable solution if it's easy to come by. I think that fits my particular situation well.

Thanks for the tips gents, I think I will continue to keep some brush for tinder. The reason I got to thinking about it is because I'm doing a lot of pruning this year and my yard recycle garbage can is stacked so high you can't close the lid every week all summer long. I figured if I could get some useful wood out of what I'm throwing away I could get more junk in the can and get it out of here. Maybe more pine in the garbage and more cedar out to dry, use the elm primarily for kindling pieces and get tinder from wood that's more friendly to the purpose. I wish I could burn the chestnut leaves for tinder, they wind up killing my ivy if I dump them.