Homemade Fire Starter Cubes


 
R

Rob (Rob_af0h)

New member
I was experimenting today (my day off) with some homemade fire starter cubes. Very simple to make, I thought it would be an interesting experiment. I've always got sawdust in the shop (Shop Vac), and my wife has many pounds of paraffin wax left over from when she used to make candles.

I very lightly coated an empty egg carton with cooking oil. Once coated, I then filled each section with sawdust. Over the sawdust I poured melted paraffin wax. Once cooled, they dropped right out.

Lighting them was a little harder than the Weber Cubes. They lit fine - just took a little longer with the BBQ lighter. Once lit, they burned much hotter than the regular cubes with a flame about 3x higher. They were good for 10-minutes of solid output, which I feel is more than enough to start a chimney full of charcoal.


I've included pics below, sorry about the poor quality, wife has the camera with her.

Cubes.jpg


Not sure why the cubes look rough/fuzzy in this pic, must be the light reflecting off the wax.


Burning.jpg


Once again, sorry about the poor pic quality, but the flames are clearly coming up and over the grate on my Smokey Joe.
 
Rob - I recently got a bunch of the 2 1/2 doz egg crates - I do the same thing you did, except I cut the egg cartons with the lighter cubes apart and burn the egg carton (they are not the plastic ones) along with the saw dust and paraffin.

Before I got the egg carton supply, I bought a cupcake pan for the bite sized cupcakes and put the sawdust and paraffin in the cupcake pan. I took a little paring knife and flipped the lighter cubes out of the cupcake pan.

You're right - they're a little harder to light, but burn long and hot.

Fun to make, too!

Pat
 
i make my own

i use the cardboard egg cartons, fill each hole with a wad of dryer lint (from the clothes dryer)

then i pour melted wax into each one.

They light very easily, and burn for about 10 minutes.
 
These paraffin fire starters take me WAY-Y back to my back packing days. We used coarse sawdust from a chainsaw to fill cardboard egg cartons. They were quite light and several could be easily carried for fires. They would actually start wet wood or even green wood, if necessary for a campfire.

Personally, I am just re-cycling my newspaper in my Weber Chimney Starter but I'll bet the paraffin starters would work extremely well. Those who use them claim there is no chemical taste or smell...

Dale53
 
You folks who make your own starter cubes are totally hardcore !
Looks like a fun activity.
 
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