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Cotton Ball With Ashes Fire Starter - No Match Needed
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<blockquote data-quote="Teri Anne" data-source="post: 2798459" data-attributes="member: 118816"><p>Many years ago, when teaching cold weather survival the military issued some very high quality butane lighters for our survival kits. They performed magnificently until down to about -25 degrees. At temps below -25 their ignition was erratic or non existent. The solution to this issue was to go back to kitchen matches coated with a light coat of paraffin to waterproof them and store them <strong>HEAD DOWN</strong> in on of those OD Plastic match containers you can buy online at any surplus or sporting goods store. Why store them head down? Because the inside of the top of the container had striker material and if you had then stored head up there was a possibility that the matches could ignite and the container explode in your hand while screwing the cap on or off. I had both the butane lighter, matches and a ball of steel wool in my kits. </p><p></p><p>Steel wool has a light oil coating on it to keep it from rusting. It is also comparatively speaking a good conductor of electricity for a few seconds. It is also flammable. If you take steel wool, roll it into a loose ball, take and form some leads on each end by simply twisting some of the wire into a contact, somewhat like you dapper Dan's do when curling your stache, then take the two leads and touch them to a 1.5 volt battery the steel wool, now short circuited will heat up red hot in an instant and produce a short term but very hot ignition source that if in contact with tinder will easily start a fire. The trick is 1 - have steel wool. 2 - have a battery. In these modern times having a battery usually is not an issue. We carry flashlights, we have trail cams that have 8 AA batteries and the list goes on. One caution however do not use bare fingers to touch the steel wool to the battery contacts. You will very painfully burn your fingers if you do. I found that if you made your contacts long enough so that you could have your ball of steel wool covered with tinder, the leads outside of the pile of tinder, the battery laid on it's side with the two contacts close to the ends of he batteries if you took a stick and pressed the ends of leads to the battery positive and negative ends ignition occurs, you don't burn your hands and you have just created a fireball to ignite your tinder. It works, feel free to try it, coarser steel wool works better than the real fine type, just do it outdoors on a surface that is not ignitable.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Teri Anne, post: 2798459, member: 118816"] Many years ago, when teaching cold weather survival the military issued some very high quality butane lighters for our survival kits. They performed magnificently until down to about -25 degrees. At temps below -25 their ignition was erratic or non existent. The solution to this issue was to go back to kitchen matches coated with a light coat of paraffin to waterproof them and store them [B]HEAD DOWN[/B] in on of those OD Plastic match containers you can buy online at any surplus or sporting goods store. Why store them head down? Because the inside of the top of the container had striker material and if you had then stored head up there was a possibility that the matches could ignite and the container explode in your hand while screwing the cap on or off. I had both the butane lighter, matches and a ball of steel wool in my kits. Steel wool has a light oil coating on it to keep it from rusting. It is also comparatively speaking a good conductor of electricity for a few seconds. It is also flammable. If you take steel wool, roll it into a loose ball, take and form some leads on each end by simply twisting some of the wire into a contact, somewhat like you dapper Dan's do when curling your stache, then take the two leads and touch them to a 1.5 volt battery the steel wool, now short circuited will heat up red hot in an instant and produce a short term but very hot ignition source that if in contact with tinder will easily start a fire. The trick is 1 - have steel wool. 2 - have a battery. In these modern times having a battery usually is not an issue. We carry flashlights, we have trail cams that have 8 AA batteries and the list goes on. One caution however do not use bare fingers to touch the steel wool to the battery contacts. You will very painfully burn your fingers if you do. I found that if you made your contacts long enough so that you could have your ball of steel wool covered with tinder, the leads outside of the pile of tinder, the battery laid on it's side with the two contacts close to the ends of he batteries if you took a stick and pressed the ends of leads to the battery positive and negative ends ignition occurs, you don't burn your hands and you have just created a fireball to ignite your tinder. It works, feel free to try it, coarser steel wool works better than the real fine type, just do it outdoors on a surface that is not ignitable. [/QUOTE]
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