bogydave
Minister of Fire
It will be like the first time you had sex. You will want to kill yourself for not doing it before.
May just have to try it next fall when I light the stove .
It will be like the first time you had sex. You will want to kill yourself for not doing it before.
Newspaper knots, pffft, can't believe I ever used those myself. They work well enough if that is what you have. Check out my Magic Oak Noodles!My first year burning I used paper knots and smaller splits to get a fire going. It sometimes used quite a bit of paper!! lol
Andrew
I love the TP tube idea!I use a couple different things.
- Dryer lint and toilet paper tubes (you take your dryer lint and cram it in the toilet paper tube and it only takes a couple to get a log cabin started.
- Pine cones
If I use them both together it works even better and they are both free
I tried pine cones dipped in candle wax. OK, but then a member from Texas
put me onto pine cones soaked in kerosene. Just so happens I had a bunch
of Y2K kerosene. Heh! Too old now to use for anything other than cleaning
greasy auto parts- but boy does it enhance pine cones! Easy starting this
way. This has been so successful and reliable a method for me that I'd no
longer even bother trying other methods. But Super Cedars definitely are
awesome! Guess I've got a poor man's form of them. BTW old, sour
kerosene seems to have a very long shelf life in this particular application.
May not be a good idea if you have a catalytic wood stove.
BTW let me hasten to add that Kerosene is about the only accelerant I would
consider using this way. I know of no other which has all the necessary
properties. Many are quite explosive, like gasoline, etc.- or the flame spread
is too fast, whereas Kerosene is pretty slow.
Think of it this way- you've heard of kerosene lanterns, right? Or oil lanterns,
etc. But not gasoline lanterns, right? There you go...
I've come to think of cones and kero as quite a safe and reliable method.
YMMV...
Next best are. Rutland Safe Lite Fire Starter Squares $13 ,144-Squares
Fatwood is from the stumps of conifers. It has concentrated resins in the "sticks". They light well enough but they give off a black smoke. I used to buy them in 30lb boxes from Plow &Hearth catalogue. LL Bean is the next volumn seller.
I put them on top of newspaper and then pile kindling on top of fatwood sticks(3-4).
But I process 5cords of wood a year from trees harvested from my own woodlot. I have all the kindling Im willing to pick up.
I like the kerosene soaked pine cones idea, it sounds effective. I think Ive seen smudgepots in Plow & Hearth as well.
Ummm....
But your point is still valid.