How to make Natural Homemade Firestarters
Instructions for how to make natural firelighters using wood wool, beeswax, and liquid cooking oil. It takes about thirty minutes, start to finish, and uses wood wool that is often found in gift baskets.
Servings 20 Fire lighters
Cost $5
Equipment
- 2 medium stainless steel pans Of similar size. I used ones 8.5" in diameter.
- large stainless steel pot A larger pan that one of the above pans can sit inside
Ingredients
- 65 g Wood wool 2.29 oz / Taken from one gift basket
- 75 g beeswax 3/4 cup
- 50 g sunflower oil 1/4 cup / you can use another liquid cooking oil
Instructions
- The first step is twisting the wood wool into a coil. Imagine how a spinner uses a wad of wool to spin yarn - the wool is connected to the yarn and not pulled away from it. You'll do the same by twisting the wood wool a handful at a time while not disconnecting the cord from the pile.
- Have the pile in front of you and one of the pots at the ready. Take a handful of wood wool like this and twist it into a cord about an inch thick. Twist it as tightly as you can.
- As you work, twist the coil into a spiral like this. Twist it into a spiral large enough to fit inside the pot.
- You place the coil of wood wool in this first pan just to hold it in shape temporarily so that you can move on to the next step.
- Measure the beeswax and oil into the second pan that's the same size as the pan that the coil is currently resting in. Melt the beeswax by floating this pan inside a larger one filled with simmering water.* Heat on medium-high until the wax is melted.
- Stir the beeswax as it melts into the oil with a wooden skewer or chopstick. The melting won't take long -- a few minutes.
- Turn the heat off once the wax has fully melted and take the coil of wood wool and place it inside the wax. Keep it held in the twisted spiral as best as you can.
- Leave the wood wool sitting the melted wax for a few seconds then turn it over using the skewer and your hand and leave the coil in the pot. Be careful since the wax will be very hot. The goal here is to coat both sides of the coil with wax.
- Once you've flipped the coil over in the previous step, leave it to cool to just warm, or even room temperature, inside the pan. The cooling time will take about half an hour to an hour since you leave the pan sitting in the pot of hot water. This slower cooling allows the waxy oil to better soak into the wood wool fibers.
- When cooled, take the coil out of the pan and set it on wax paper. The pan you can wash out later using boiling water, or you can reserve it for use in beeswax crafts.
- Tease the spiral out and cut the coil into segments about 1.5 long using a pair of scissors.
- Each segment is a single natural fire lighter and will hold together well.
- You'll get around twenty natural fire lighters using this recipe and instructions. If you do choose to double or triple it, please see the notes on that below*.
- You can store natural firestarters in whatever container you'd like as long as it's kept well away from flames. However, firestarters feel waxy and can leave a residue on surfaces so that's something to consider when storing them. A wax paper-lined bag, mason jar, or a large ziplock bag might be a good idea. A biscuit tin like my vintage piece is even better since it's flame-proof. Whatever you choose, you can pack them in as tightly as you wish.
Notes
*Beeswax is highly flammable so please do not heat it directly on the hob without this double boiler method.
*To double or triple this recipe, you could use larger pans. But if you want to use the same sized ones, I recommend making two or three distinct spirals of wood wool coils. Stack them on top of one another in the pot. Now, instead of transferring them directly into the melted wax, carefully pour the wax over them. Then, using tongs, place them in the now-empty pot with their non-soaked sides facing up. Pour the wax over them again. Keep moving the wood wool around until you're sure that they've all had a good dousing and have soaked up all of the wax. Cool and cut as described in the recipe.