On the subject of tinder

[area_man]

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?

 

[Chimney Smoke]

I have a big wooden storage box I fill with dead pine branches to use for firestarters. Never tried dry cedar leaves.

 

[Ashful]

Cedar makes great kindling and tinder... even cut off a live tree, to some extent.

Pine... not so much.

I used to do the same, but time is money, and SuperCedars are cheap. I'm a convert.

 

[bassJAM]

I got tired of splitting kindling last year, so I’ve been setting all the finger sized limbs aside in a pile this year and plan on making a box out in the shed out of pallets to store them in for kindling. I also saved all my noodles for tinder. Personally I don’t like throwing corrugated boxes in my firebox, but I do save the brown paper that Amazon uses for packing, just in case I run out of noodles.


Keep in mind, that twigs from hardwoods will take a little more effort to light than split wood or twigs from cedar trees. Even when dry, the bark seems to slow things down a little. Also, drier lint works great, but it’s even better when it’s strictly from 100% cotton clothes.


I’ve never tried cedar greens, but I’d think that they’d be so messy once dry, and they’d burn up so quickly, that it probably isn’t worth the effort.

 

[Fred Wright]

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.

 

[mustash29]

There's a guy on here that burns sticks & twigs from his yard in his Froling for summer DHW.

 

[bmblank]

My uncle does that. Every day he goes on a walk through the woods and what he picks up heats their dhw for the day. Or so he says.

 

[Applesister]

whats a dhw? When I cut certain species and prune I pretty much save everything. I have the space to store it so I entertain myself with similar activities.

 

[bmblank]

Dhw is domestic hot water

 

[Pennsyltucky Chris]

I have 2 55 gallon trash drums filled with tinder. I used small branches from a downed maple and the splinters from splitting wood. I hand split, and every "misfire" yields kindling.

 

[Longstreet]

Can anyone speak to using things like cardboard and cereal boxes as starters in a cat stove? This will be my first season using one (woodstock fireview) and I thought the instructions said to stay away from those items. Not sure if they are just trying to scare me, though.

I have saved up all my scrapes from wood working projects. Lots of little pieces of trim and cutoffs.

 

[Woody Stover]

I'm gonna use Tulip this year, split small. Might need a little chunk of SuperCedar, or may be able to light a Tulip stick with a bic lighter...

 

[Woody Stover]

Can anyone speak to using things like cardboard and cereal boxes as starters in a cat stove?

No. No colored paper either. I'm even going to quit using Pine. I'm thinking the pitch will stick, and when it burns off, the ash will stick. Probably not a big deal, guys burn nothing but Pine it cats, but I'll avoid it anyway.

 

[Pennsyltucky Chris]

The wife's amazon boxes always come in handy.......

 

[Ashful]

...the instructions said to stay away from those items. Not sure if they are just trying to scare me, though.

Well, that is their primary marketing strategy... scare people away from their product, by making unnecessary stipulations in the instructions.

 

[Woody Stover]

Well, that is their primary marketing strategy... scare people away from their product, by making unnecessary stipulations in the instructions.

Well, it didn't work on me. To me, the cat is where it's at.

 

[area_man]

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.

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.

 

[Richie]

Sassafras without question in my kindling of choice. I split thin and can light with a match.

 

[bwise.157]

Last fall I purchased a box of 144 small square fire starters from TSC for $10. I would break each one in half, and use it to start/restart a fire. I still have half a box left. Much easier and less work than newspaper or kindling!

 

[bsruther]

I save a lot of scrap that piles up under the splitter and small pieces left over from the miter saw for tinder. I also save toilet paper and paper towel cores. The cores a great for filling with small stuff.
Whenever I see wooden furniture in someones garbage at the curb, I grab it and chop it up on the miter saw. I like the oak chairs best. The furniture wood makes great kindling and can help get a sluggish fire up and running. I have about 8 chairs worth of kindling out in the garage and it's surprising how much wood is there. The good chairs I find get refinished.

 

[Fred Wright]

Yep, I prefer to make use of tree brush as tinder rather than leave it lay in the woods to rot. Waste not, want not. We don't use it all but we use a heck of a lot of it.

 

[jillybeansisme]

Well, my builder is supposed to be saving the cut offs of my kiln dried 2 x 4s and 2 x 6s and I plan on using that as kindling in my wood stove. Meanwhile, is there anything wrong with dried pine cones?

 

[STIHLY DAN]

turbo torch 30 sec o
and done. small tank will last a few years.