10 Simple Fire Starters to Prepare for Texas Winters
First off, starting a fire in the fireplace or an outdoor BBQ grill we must all remember to practice safety at all times and be aware of any burn bans around us. That said let's get started. Starting a fire with little or nothing seems to be a common problem for a lot of us.
I find myself helping those plagued with no fire-starting skills more often than not. But if you'll do a little gathering and prepping you'll be a fire-starting ninja. To get started you're going to need a few things but you won't really have to buy anything most of what we will use is already laying around the house, bathroom, car, garage, and/or the great outdoors.
For the record, I don't like using wax substances, I will but only as a last resort. Though the wax-dipped tampons and pinecones seem to do better. So, here's everything we will need to make our easy and inexpensive homemade fire starters:
Get some lint (like that stuff you clean out of your clothes dryer), hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol, fingernail polish, Vaseline, your empty toilet paper or paper towel spools, tampons, a Maxipad, long strike anywhere matches, marshmallows, twist ties, dried up leaves, twigs, pinecones, acorns, pecans, any old wood shavings, paper from a shredder and a couple of .22 caliber bullets. Another real good flammable substance is powdered coffee-creamer.
As seen in the photos above, you can use these handy firestarters right away or do like I do, I store mine in zip-lock baggies to have handy or n my backpack. The .22 caliber bullet comes in very handy when I'm camping and in a hurry, I carefully extract the gunpowder (powered coffee creamer works well too).
Keep in mind that fire is like a child, you've got to keep an eye on it at all times. As I stated above, PLEASE, use extreme caution and never start a fire you can't watch it. Stay warm and good eating y'all.