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Make Your Own Fire Starters

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Making homemade fire starters with wax on the stove

Would it be too weird if I asked you to save your dryer lint for me? Okay. I agree! But dryer lint is highly flammable making it the perfect base for your own fire starters. Got a wood stove? Know someone who does? Ever want to start a bonfire quickly? These are the easiest and cheapest fire starters you can make. 

Supplies
  • An older pot (translation: Don’t use your Calphalon one)
  • Paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls and/or wrapping paper rolls
  • An old soup ladle (the cheap plastic ones at Panera Bread are perfect)
  • Several old wax candles
  • Scissors & a tape measure
  • A big soup can (mine measures 7 inches tall & 4 inches across, the small 15 ounce cans are too small)
  • Wax paper
  • All the dryer lint you can acquire
Instructions
1. Fill your pot with water just like you would if you were making pasta. Place your big soup can in the pot. Break up several candles into the can. Melt on medium heat for about 20 minutes until wax is completely melted. (You really don’t want the water boiling, just hot enough to slowly melt the wax). 
2. While the wax is melting, cut up your paper towel, toilet paper or wrapping paper rolls into sections that measure about 1 1/2 inches. For example, you would cut a toilet paper roll into three pieces making small rounds. As long as you’ve saved enough dryer lint, you should plan on making at least 60 fire starters. So you’ll need to cut up that many rounds.
3. Lay out your 60ish rounds on several pieces of wax paper right next to the stove. (You don’t want hot wax dripping on your countertop). Jam-pack each round with as much dryer lint as you can stuff in there. The close up shots proved to be disgusting so I left them out! 
4. Drape more wax paper on any counter or stovetop space that hot wax could get spilled on when you are transferring the wax. Another strategy (if the wax is 100% liquified) is to just turn off the stove and hold the can with a pot holder while working with the wax in the next step). 
5.) Scoop one small ladle of melted wax in each round. Let the rounds sit for several hours before storing. It’s that easy. And cheap. Not as fun as making brownies, but gets the job done. 

A last tip: Cardboard egg cartons work wonderful as well ~ if you can still find them! Typically, the eggs I buy always seemed to be packed in styrofoam. 

Thanks for sharing with your wood burning, fire starting friends. And as always, thanks for being such wonderful readers!!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  4. Jeffrey Jones says

    Very unique way of making a firestarter…never would have known of this befor…Thanks for the great info!

    Reply

  10. Nancy says

    This is an interesting strategy for making use of items that might otherwise be thrown away: dryer lint, old wax candles, toilet paper rolls.

    Reply

  16. Tara L says

    Clever and neat idea if the world ever came down to that but I don’t think I would have the patience but would be willing to try that mehtod.

    Reply

  17. Ronnell Storie says

    I’ve done this for years. They work great. I keep a bag hanging on wall for the lint to go in. Very handy for camping in damp conditions. Put 1 in an empty soup can, good hand warmer when it is cold. Thanks for the useful article!

    Reply

  19. Jean F says

    While this sounds like a great idea (and the only way I’ve heard of using dryer lint), it’s too much work for me.

    Reply