What do you light your fire with?

[Woody Stover]

A basic BIC lighter will last for over a month, simple to use and cost a magnitude less. We use a cheapy BBQ lighter equivalent.

A month? What are you doing, igniting big splits directly with the lighter?
Someone gave me a BIC BBQ, but I think it's slowing down this year. I need to find one of those in a refillable version..I hate throwing away all that plastic.

 

[MTASH]

I switched to a butane culinary torch a few years ago. Much better than using disposable lighters, and the refillable BBQ type lighters we tried all became unreliable and ended up throwing away anyway. Too much waste.

 

[RandyBoBandy]

I’ve been working on the same box of matches for two or three seasons now. No plastic to worry about. The fire doesn’t go out enough for me to worry about the cost of long matches.

 

[mpaul]

I typically use kindling, fat wood and a bic lighter. If I need to get things going a little quicker I plug in my loof lighter which really heats things up.

 

[lml999]

I've never had a "smoke out" as long as I get the draft started first.

Had two of those in the past two weeks. With a cold stove, I've got a pretty good downdraft. Made lighting a fire in the fireplace very difficult...

I was amazed by the amount (and pattern) of smoke coming out of the stove.

So, with the (cold) stove, I have to remember to start off with a bit of paper on the top to get things moving in the right direction, and a window cracked. With a warm stove, this is a non-issue.

 

[Ignem]

Newspaper, scraps from splitting, splits on top, and a long Zippo works fine for me. I guess the bypass damper on the stove helps when the flue is cold. I have 3 floors (more than 30') of outside flue.

I notice that when I use paper grocery bags instead of newspaper balls that they create more smoke than heat and they can get a little smoke coming out of the air intake and collar.

I'd look into using a super cedar if it wasn't for the fact that I so rarely actually start a fire. I usually have coals.