One of my summer goals was to make some firestarters. When I first started buringing my Dad (who has a Buck 52 which was the reason we got started in this house) gave me a handfull of firestarters he made. These are simply made from dryer lint tucked into carboard egg cartons and then old candle wax poored on top. I made a batch of these today and they came out OK but next time I will not pack the lint so tight to allow the wax to penetrate more deeply.
While I had the wax melting, I dug out the bag of sawdust from when I cut up a scrounge tree (Bald Cyprus) last May. The wax won't penetrate the saw dust so I poored the saw dust into the melted wax and created a slurry of sorts. I filled another couple of egg cartons with this mixture but had some left over. I decided to make a large block of the remainder of the mix inside of a plastic shoe box. I sprayed the the inside with non-stick cooking spray before I poored in in. I had to let is set up for a long time as the heat was retained for hours.
The block came out easily and I sawed it into 30 plus pieces that ended up looking like brownies due to the wax color. I tried one out and the flame was strong and lasted well over ten minutes. Here are some photos from the process.
Thought you might be interested.
Don Ed
While I had the wax melting, I dug out the bag of sawdust from when I cut up a scrounge tree (Bald Cyprus) last May. The wax won't penetrate the saw dust so I poored the saw dust into the melted wax and created a slurry of sorts. I filled another couple of egg cartons with this mixture but had some left over. I decided to make a large block of the remainder of the mix inside of a plastic shoe box. I sprayed the the inside with non-stick cooking spray before I poored in in. I had to let is set up for a long time as the heat was retained for hours.
The block came out easily and I sawed it into 30 plus pieces that ended up looking like brownies due to the wax color. I tried one out and the flame was strong and lasted well over ten minutes. Here are some photos from the process.
Thought you might be interested.
Don Ed