DIY firestarters

[imashooter2]

Any old Boy Scouts remember how to make fuzz sticks?

Sure. Wasn*t near as easy as putting a match on the corner of a waxed egg carton.

[Sparks]

Oh, I agree, and we made the egg carton starters, but if you are lost in the woods, knowing how to make a fuzz stick will make things easier.

[McSull]

Oh, I agree, and we made the egg carton starters, but if you are lost in the woods, knowing how to make a fuzz stick will make things easier.

There are infinite ways to make fire, or make fire easier to make. All useful. Never know when one will be useful

[Sandcut]

Fire starting is all about the ratio between volume of the piece that you are trying to light and the amount of surface area exposed to flame.

S:V

Objects with a large amount of surface area with a low volume are much more easily burned. The more surface that is exposed to heat, the more cell walls in the wood are made to collapse, releasing the volatile hydrocarbons trapped inside. For example, we will use Sparks' fuzz stick to demonstrate this. (BTW, you may want to take fire-making advice from a guy named "Sparks". Just sayin'.).

If you touch a match to a wrist-thick piece of wood, generally it will leave a black mark and maybe light a fiber or two, but won't ignite the whole billet. That is because the volume is huge when compare to the exposed surface area. Now, if you take your trusty knife and carve a bunch of thin curls down the billet, keeping them attatched at one end, the surface area of each curl becomes very large in comparison to the small volume within the curl. This causes more heat to surround the curl, causing the wooden cell walls to collapse from the heat, and allows for the volatile contents to catch fire. This is known as " pyrolysis". It isn't the "wood" that does most of the burning, it's the gas that is released from the wood. Did you ever watch a flame? The flame doesn't originate directly on the wood. There is a small area between the wood and the flame where the cell contents liquify, then gasify, then ignite.

If you make enough curls on your fuzz stick, you can easily ignite the same wrist-sized piece of wood that you couldn't before.

Where it also helps is by exposing drier wood inside the billet. Wet surface wood now has to not only overcome a large volume to a small surface area, but the flame has to first dry out the wood fibers before they will reach a temperature necessary for the cell walls to collapse.

That's it for class this evening. Answer the odd questions for this chapter for next class and be ready for a quiz on this whole section.

[reverserboy]

Everclear soaked cotton balls. The alcohol can also be a cleaner..... disinfectant..... antiseptic.