Magic Fire Biscuits – make your own fire lighter/tinder

We all love fire but sometimes we struggle a bit, the quick how-to below from Jonny boy shows us how to make some quick but very effective tinder fire starters with just a few ingredients and a little time.

Magic biscuits are a good simple way of helping to light your fire.
There are a few ways of creating these from cotton wool balls dipped in vaseline to face pads soaked in wax.

Items needed are

Candle (supermarket bought for $2)
Vaseline (optional)
Face pads
Old pan
A pair of pliers/forceps to remove from liquid wax.

The first step is to shave pieces of wax from the candle into the pan, I have used a knife for this but also an old cheese grater)

Then I add a good helping of Vaseline to the mix

Place the pan on the heat and melt the two together slowly until there are no lumps of wax or vaseline left, then turn the heat off. The mix will stay liquid long enough to dip the pads.

Next using your pliers pick up and dip the face pad in the liquid and coat all over. The longer its in, the more it will soak up, this may be required, but I prefer not to as when you break them open it leaves you with some cotton wool to light instead of having to melt the wax first.

Then carefully lay them out on some greaseproof paper and allow to dry. The greaseproof paper can then be peeled off and your left with flat wax infused cotton pad.

I store some of mine in the bottom of my Wild Wood stove along with some other fire lighting bits (thanks, BareThrills)

Source@ Bushcraftuk.com

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