Very professionally arranged video! It lacks kit and polish ofc - but you've hit ALL the pro points with what you do have and use, impressive and inspiring Good information, very helpful, will definitely use this to help me make the emergency tinder I'll need for my mini ferro rods
Paraffin is cheap and easy to get, I mix 10% paraffin lamp oil in my wax. Also I find very cheap crayons at garage sales and thrift stores. Cheaper than the wax or old candles. That was an interesting experiment, I won’t hesitate to throw in bees wax or soy to the thrift store mix. Don’t want the carnauba
Paraffin is easy to get and that's what I've used. I made this after seeing how many "Best Fire Starter Ever!" videos and noticing none of them looked at different wax choices. Thanks for sharing how you make yours so they're easy to light.
@@lakeeffected If you think about it... can you light a candle if the wick is not above the wax? That's Y I leave some un-dipped cotton. Besides, paraffin is dry and clean. Vaseline aint!! Just be careful with melted wax on the stove.
Yep, same here I dip my cotton disks only 3/4. That leaves a plain cotton handle that is not messy if the wax coating melts from summer heat. As you said the bare cotton area is also easy to ignite with a ferro rod.
Melting point: Carnauba wax: 185 F Beeswax: 140 F Soy wax: 120 F Paraffin wax: 99 F Paraffin wax supposedly has better chemical stability for long term storage. The carnauba wax may have cracked because it cooled too fast. If you double dip, you have the option of different inner and outer wax layers.
With this video specifically dealing with wax type, I am not going to address fire starter types or designs. Wax is typically used as kindling. As such, it needs to light easily from tinder while generating enough heat, over enough time, to get the fuel lit. With that in mind, I would eliminate the soy and carnauba because both reduce your chance getting a successful survival fire. The soy does not burn hot enough to guarantee a fire in poor conditions. The Carnauba cracking could compromise some styles of fire starters or just flake off over time, so why take the risk?
Good video, thanks for making it. I use paraffin wax (Gulf Wax) because Carnuba costs 3 or 4 times more than paraffin. I also stir in some powdered sulfur to the paraffin wax while it melts. Some early matches were called Brimstone matches and they were simply wood or paper dipped in melted sulfur. I have 3 different dry-fuel based fire-starters that I've come up with. Looking to patent one of them... but it lights so fast and burns so hot that safety is an issue I need to address to sell it retail. And no, it doesn't have gasoline in it... LOL
The idea of adding sulfur is interesting. I was thinking about embedding a strip of magnesium ribbon in some to see that goes. The possibilities are endless and probably overkill.
I currently use regular tea candles , soy wax, as a fire starter, a commenter on my channel mentioned how someone they knew had a shouse fire because the wax built up creosote and caused the entire chinney to catch fire, i have not found any research to confirm this, have you ever heard of that?
I've never heard of that. It's hard to see how wax could cause creosote build-up. It should burn much cleaner than wood and the emissions should be miniscule by comparison to the wood.
I was told by a chimney sweep that if you burn a lot of candles and just candles, you can have a build up of flammable material. But using a tiny bit of wax in a fire starter won’t do that. He suggested I use a cotton pad soaked in wax as a fire starter, but just one with a bundle of untreated tinder. He did not like my six pillar candles in the fireplace that I burned instead of wood
