How I Make Wax Coated Wood Chip Fire Starters

hi hi arm here the other day I get a little video on my firestarters the ones on one of that I make from sawdust and bread wax or you could use any color wax but I had showed these shown those and I got a comment from Long Island prepper 1 or I'm sorry I'm not sure if it's Long Island or Long Island Island prepper one where they asked can you show us how you coated your fire starters in wax I'm trying it now and not able to get a good coating like I see you of God he even used red wax to see it better so I thought what I do is do a quick video I hope a quick video on how I make these things the ones with wood now I had said that if you have a source of sawdust you're ahead of the game I don't here so what I have to use is I use Aspen bedding like what you would get from a pet shop it looks like this here I'll do a close-up shot put shot and put it on the screen that's a quarter in front of it I don't throw that in but that's just there to show you what the chips look like they're big hunkers what I'll do with them now is I take these and I put them in an old food processor do not use your wipes blender or anything like that whatever you do this in it's going to be pretty near messed up just for that anymore so I take these chips put it in like so and unfortunately you can't see the top it's too tall for the camera just put it in here and I'm going to speed this up but you just grind them up okay so but that's like that only took maybe about two minutes I probably condensed this for the video but then what you have is stuff that looks like this just like that now what I'll do is I'll do a close-up shot here and put it in what I usually want with this is not so much sawdust but like saw chips it's much finer than the big chips that you saw before but it's not exactly dust and this is what I'll use for making my fire starters so let me clean this stuff off and I'll be right back for the coating hey I'm back put all that stuff away now this is how I melt my wax I use a mug warmer it's one of those things like with people that drink coffee and stuff in our office is they can put their mugs on these things and it keeps their coffee warm I picked these up at Goodwill usually for a buck or something they're really handy you don't want to use do this kind of stuff in your wife's kitchen you make a mess and you're in the doghouse for the longest time I know so I do it out here if you can do it in the kitchen you could use a double boiler or something to melt your wax you don't want to just what melt wax though on an open flame this keeps it wet I don't know if you can see it here it melts it down real nice so then you just want a small metal cup normally I do it in this one you can see how it messes up the pan I do bigger batches in this but for today so that you can see what I'm doing I'm gonna make a small one now this is a piece of wax about this size just a broken candle wax threw it in there and within about 10 minutes or so it was melted down you also want to hang on to these wicks they come in handy for other things so I've got the melted wax there all I do now is while it's still on the mug warmer just put some of this in don't dump it all in at one shot you want to see how much wax you've got in this never made a small batch like this so this ought to be interesting while it's warm on the mug warmer just kind of stir it around get it all covered the mug warmer keeps the wax melted or a double boiler like I said would do the same thing just stir it in there make sure all the stuff gets all good and coated I don't know if you'll be able to see this but there's still some loose wax in there so what I can do is I just add a little more sawdust carefully you just don't want to put too much in it you end up having to add wax but you just want it so that when you have your sawdust in here all of it is coated without a bunch of wax on the bottom of the pot being wasted and I like using red because again I can see if the stuff is coated everything starts turning red just get it off the sides mix it up okay and that's how I do it no there's one more step I want to try here but that's how I cope my wax on a larger scale usually but just like that I got a comment from wjf 2 1 3 where wjf asked about putting magnesium shavings on the cotton rounds if that would help them be a good fire starter interesting idea I thought while I'm doing this I'll add some magnesium shavings and see what it does want to go to like this so I'll just pour a little bit in here now this shouldn't start on fire right now that's a nice thing about this mug warmer it's not that terribly warm just enough to melt wax so now I'll mix this stuff in see if I can just brush it around but I separated those a little better but you just keep mixing it in mixing it all around you just don't want loose wax on the bottom of the bowl because that's kind of wasted should've busted them up better ok so once your stuff is mixed up the way you want it in this case with the added magnesium 2 strips pieces shavings now you're taking this on your own if you want to try this I'm just trying it you don't shouldn't do it unless you know what you're doing I do this stuff so you don't have to once you've got everything mixed up the way you want it I just lay down a piece of wax paper take your coated shavings you know if you want you can put them in a form like a 10 or something and get them round but all I do is just form them up kind of squarish flatten them out while they're still warm and they should stick okay so once you've got that just let it set for a little bit until it cools and solidifies and you've got your firestarter so let me break here while this stuff solidifies I'll clean up some of this mess and we'll be back for a lighting test okay back again the temperature in here is a little high so this isn't solidifying as hard as I'd like it to but it's hard enough for me to try it here so what I'll do now is I showed you it this is what it looks like right now and what I'll do is break off a piece see if I get a piece with the magnesium in it put it on the plate just a little piece here don't want to light the whole place up let me get rid of this okay let me go to camera two and let's see what happens the wax is burning well the magnesium lights and just kind of Peters out I guess because it's cow wax all over it but you can see that the the wood is working it's all lighting up working very well so that's bass there goes some magnesium I guess because it's in strips and shavings not powder that it's just not doing much of anything but lighting so I hope that helps Long Island prepper 1 all you got to do is just mix it with the the wood chips the wood sawdust in a heated situation don't let it cool off and mix it in it it'll get kind of clumpy you got to mix everything while it's still warm but it makes for a pretty nice little fire starter so I thank Long Island proper one for his question I thank you for watching I look forward to your input questions remarks helpful suggestions and as always watch for my buddy max bye now

Channel: Hiram Cook

Views: 155,694

Rating: 4.8692098 out of 5

Keywords: fire starter, Rutland Safelite fire starter, Ozark Trail Firesticks, Weber Lighter Cubes, WetFire, stove, tinder, cheaper than dirt, CheaperThanDirt, burner, gram weenie, wienie, UST, Ultimate Survival Technologies, hike, hiker, hiking, walk, walker, walking, backpacker, backpacking, camp, camping, outdoors, trail, wilderness, bushcraft, survival, survivalist, emergency, gear, preparedness, retreat, BOB, bug, out, bag, kit, boil, cook, cooking, ultralite, ultralight, ultra, light

Id: qytYlnkhd8M

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2013