You don't have kindling or fire starters under the hand ?
So how do you light your chimney fire?
Without this precious kindling, you will have a hard time igniting the large logs!
Luckily, you can use just about anything to start a fire.
Just find something that catches fire easily and burns long enough to light the wood.
Here are 16 tips to light your fireplace without kindling or firelighters in no time !
In addition, it works just as well for lighting your wood stove as a campfire. Watch:
Picture source: Catherine Delveaux
Dried grass clippings make an excellent fire starter, but are not enough to light a large log.
Fortunately, most dried plants can be used to make very kindling. effective.
Here's how:
- When gardening, pick up all the dried stems and twigs of your plants.
- Cut them into large pieces of 20 to 30 cm in length.
- With these pieces, make bundles tight, as in the photo above.
- To tie the bundles, use the most flexible pieces as strings.
If your plants are really dry, a bundle will burn quickly:between 30 sec and 1 min .
If so, keep fueling your fire by adding fagots.
And keep going until the logs are burning properly.
One of the best ways to start a fire is to use newspaper.
And Sioux's trick is to tie knots in the newspaper.
Here's how:
- Take a sheet of newspaper.
- Fold it over its entire length to make a strip of paper, thin enough to make a knot.
- From this "string" of paper, make several simple knots.
- Tighten the knots as much as possible, but without tearing the paper.
Thanks to this method, you get strong and tight paper knots.
As a result, they will burn much longer than newspaper in balls.
This allows you to get much more soaring time.
And therefore, large logs will catch fire more easily!
Wood bark is one of the best alternatives to kindling.
What if you took your logs from a pile of wood…
This means that you probably have a lot of pieces of bark!
Know that you can use just about any type of bark to start a fire.
The pieces just need to be big enough to burn as long as the kindling.
The bark that burns the best is that of birch.
Besides, she even tends to burn a little too quickly to light the logs of a chimney fire.
If so, there is a trick to make birch bark burn much longer.
Just make big bundles with several pieces of bark and tie them up.
Exactly like with the dried plant trick, mentioned earlier.
To tie the packages without tightening them too much, use the flexible part, the one inside the bark of the birch.
For those who don't know, fatty wood is a piece of dried softwood.
It is usually found in Scots pine or maritime pine.
And the particularity of this wood is that it is saturated with sap .
In fact, it contains so much that it feels like holding a piece of petrified wood!
Fat wood is found in the branches near the trunk, those that are all sticky.
If you see branches oozing with sap, that's where you'll find fat wood.
The sap contains turpentine, and ignites at the slightest spark... even in a humid environment!
This concentration of sap allows the fatty wood to ignite quickly and burn strong and long .
In short, it is the perfect fire starter. !
It works so well that people generally prefer to use it as a fire starter, scraping it to make shavings.
But it also makes great kindling, if you cut a big chunk out of it.
Do you live in a region where there is no naturally fatty wood?
Know that you can find some in hiking stores or here on the Internet.
No, of course, it's not about sacrificing a hedgehog to light your fire!
Among scouts, the method is also called the "broom" or the "duster".
This is an old survival technique very effective in igniting logs.
In addition, making a "hedgehog" is easy as pie.
All you need is a piece of wood and a good sharp knife.
Here's how:
- Get a piece of wood 10 cm long and a sharp knife, such as a penknife.
- Being very careful with your fingers, make a cut deep enough to produce a long chip.
- Continue to make notches along the entire length of the stick.
In no time, your stick will look like a hedgehog, hence the name!
Make 10 to 20 cuts, and you have kindling that will light your fire without any problem.
The finer the notches, the more easily your "hedgehog" will catch fire...
You'll see, the technique works like hell!
When collected in small piles, wood chips burn hard and long .
For example, if you have trouble making cuts on the hedgehog…
Above all, do not throw away the wood chips that fall!
Instead, scoop them up to make small piles, handy for igniting the logs of your fire.
Cardboard is similar to other paper products.
But thanks to its structure, it is even more effective in starting a fire.
In fact, the outer sheets of the cardboard are solid, to give them more rigidity.
And the cardboard also has grooves in the center, so that it is lighter.
And precisely, these grooves promote air circulation and allow the cardboard to burn better.
Cardboard burns quite slowly, so it's perfect for igniting the logs of your fire.
To make the cardboard burn longer, consider cutting it into strips.
You can also use these strips to make cardboard logs .
Here the idea is to make bundles by attaching the pieces of cardboard, as in the photo above.
This is the same principle as the bundles of bark and bundles of dried plants, mentioned earlier.
To discover: 17 Clever Ways To Repurpose Cardboard Boxes.
The crisps contain a large amount of oil.
This gives them a surprising property...
Indeed, if you carry a flame to a chip, it will burn very slowly for several minutes!
Generally, the chips produce a small flame.
Thus, to obtain a great flame , better to use a handful of chips to start a fire.
Matches aren't just for bringing a flame to your firelighter...
Indeed, extra long matches, like these, also serve as small kindling .
They burn slow enough for larger pieces of wood to catch fire.
Handy... you just had to think about it!
Did you know that you can use your old toilet paper rolls to make homemade fire starters?
Plus, it's really quick to do.
Simply fill the cardboard rolls with a material that catches fire easily.
And there, no need to look far:you can use the residues of your dryer.
Bim, you get an ultra-efficient homemade fire starter... and FREE!
To use it, ignite one end of the roll, and your firelighter will burn slowly and for a long time.
To discover: 13 Surprising Uses for Toilet Paper Rolls.
By itself, Vaseline is not a very good fire starter.
In fact, under normal conditions, Vaseline does not catch fire.
But if you spread it on a combustible and porous material , like cotton or dryer residue…
So there, something extraordinary is happening!
You get a fire starter that burns strong and for a very long time.
Note that the trick also works with:
- hydroalcoholic gel,
- the lip balm,
- cooking oil and
- candle wax.
To discover: 101 Uses of Vaseline (That You Wouldn't Even Know).
Lint from the dryer…almost everyone throws them in the trash.
Yet these textile residues burn well and make extremely efficient fire starters.
You can even make them burn even longer, by adding a slow-burning material.
For example, as mentioned earlier, you can smear petroleum jelly on dryer residue.
But you can also mix them with fat, cooking oil or candle wax.
Just mix dryer residue with one of these combustible materials.
And you get "kindling wood" that catches fire very easily...
Plus, dryer residue burns long enough to ignite the rest of your fire.
The only problem is that when preparing these fire starters, we tend to get our hands full.
Normal, because cooking oil and melted wax are messy!
The solution is to use a container to mix them without getting them everywhere.
For example, you can use an egg carton, as in the photo above.
The method is practical, because it is enough to cut the box to make small individual fire starters.
The next alternatives all have one thing in common:they are cotton-based.
And indeed, cotton catches fire easily and makes very beautiful outbreaks.
For example, if you take cotton balls and mix them with petroleum jelly…
Then you get a firelighter so effective that you won't need kindling anymore!
In fact, this YouTube video shows you exactly how.
Here are the other advantages cotton + petroleum jelly fire starters:
- they are easy to manufacture,
- it costs almost nothing,
- they burn long enough to start your fire (unless the wood is wet).
Before lighting them, just remember to pull the fibers of the cotton, so as to make it "inflate".
This will increase air circulation and your homemade fire starters will burn even more efficiently.
Note that the trick also works with makeup remover discs and melted wax. Click here to discover the tutorial.
Almost all first aid kits contain cotton gauze.
If you don't have anything else on hand, you can also use it to start a fire.
To make it burn longer, you can tie it in knots .
And as with the previous tips, also consider impregnating the cotton with Vaseline.
Yes, sanitary tampons! Does that seem surprising to you?
However, because they are made of cotton, the tampons also make excellent fire starters.
And, as with cotton pieces, if you pull on the fibers cotton to make them swell…
This allows more air to enter and to obtain a beautiful flame that lasts a long time.
And again…
Want to make tampons burn longer?
So all you have to do is add some slow-burning fuel.
For example, petroleum jelly, cooking oil or, as in the photo above, melted wax.
To discover: 85% of Tampons Contain Glyphosate, a Monsanto Carcinogen.
The situation is really desperate, and you have nothing to light your fire?
So know that there is a last resort, you can also use... coffee filters!
And for it to be more efficient?
Now you know the routine:
The best thing is to soak them with a fuel to help them burn longer .
For example, you can use leftover fat and cooking oil from the bottom of the pan.
Just soak your coffee filters in it and they will burn much slower.
Or alternatively, you can also cover them with Vaseline, and they should last long enough to start a fire.
