While doing some Christmas shopping at a top named sporting goods store I stumbled upon some high priced items that I realized would be good things to keep in your pack when you are out in the woods, but would be so easy to put together myself.
Like these small rolls of duct tape. $3.95 Really?
Another thing I came across were fire starting kits, with waterproof cases and matches and I thought…I can do that!
So, I did.
I took a small piece of cardboard and used it to wrap my tape around. Instead of having two rolls of duct tape, I included some electrical tape as well. It comes in handy sometimes! I then put it into a zip lock bag to keep it. Probably cost me a few cents in all.
Now, I had heard of people using plain old cotton balls and petroleum jelly as a good fire starter, but I wasn’t really sure how well it’d work. I put it to the test.
I would however, recommend that you put on some latex gloves first. I realized that after the fact.
Now for the test, would it work?
You can’t tell from the picture, but it was raining pretty good when I did this. Not a torrential down pour or anything, but it was a steady rain. I was not at all sure it would even work, but work it did. That one cotton ball burned for over 5 minutes in the rain. Eventually, it was beginning to slow down and I was soaking wet and cold from standing out on the porch doing my little experiment, so I snuffed the last of the embers out.
So, I took some matches bundled them up with a striker, wrapped the Vaselined cotton ball in some plastic wrap and stuffed it all into a waterproof matches case that I already had laying around the house. My new fire starting kit for when we are out on our next camping trip! Until next time, Survivalist JacLynn, signing off!