An online friend, Roger Fandrich, invented a fire starting item called Mini-Inferno. The actual ingredients are secret, but it is basically a makeup cleaning pad with fire extenders like petroleum jelly (PJ) and or paraffin wax. It works wonderfully and it comes in a nice metal tin that makes it easy to carry and also has some other bushcraft uses. The only problem with this product is it costs around $8 plus shipping for a tin of about 6 pads.
With a little searching and some easy work, I have created my own for continued use. 100 cotton pads cost around $2.60 or so, four bars of paraffin wax cost about $3.00; eight ounces of petroleum jelly and some tins to cook it all in cost a dollar each, so that is less than $8 spent.
I had already made some a while back with just PJ and they work well. Just as good as a cotton ball slathered in PJ, but I wanted to try something that is a little less messy, but still works well.
I melted all the PJ and one bar of the Paraffin wax in two of the tins and dipped the pad in the PJ first, let that dry and then in the wax to make it less gooey and still fire worthy. I was able make 45 tinder pads with what I had melted. That is quite a cost savings from the Mini-Inferno.
I had a little wax left and made a few with just the wax to compare the two. I took one of each out back and made a nice fire with some damp wood with ease. I didn't time the burn length, I just wanted to see if each was easy to light with ferro rod and if it would make a decent sustainable fire. Both performed well.
If I want to buy tins, the are about 50 cents a piece. I thank Roger for thinking this up, but I will be using my own version from now on, unless I want to periodically buy some to provide some support for his products.
Let's go make a fire...
2 comments:
Where do you get the tins from brother?
Manxbushcraft@Gmail.com
According to the patent (US 9,127,840), the disk is cotton and the added components are paraffin wax and lighter fluid, preferably charcoal lighter fluid.
Post a Comment