DIY Firestarters

Here is a cheap and easy way to make some fire starters for camping.  You probably have everything you need at home.

Materials:

Paper - raid your recycling bin, junk mail, old phone book
String - I used garden twine, but any string would work... even dental floss
Wax - I used some old ugly candles that I had
Dryer Lint
Sticks (optional)
Cardboard (optional)
Old jar with a wide mouth - I used an old pickle jar.
Stick or something for stirring your wax

Prep Work:

Ball up the dryer lint.  For each of the firestarters I used balls of lint that were about 1 inch in diameter.  You can use more or less depending on how much of it you have.  I made the balls pretty compact.

Gather some sticks and cut them into short pieces (about 1 inch pieces or smaller).

Cut up pieces of cardboard.  Small pieces about 1 in x 1 in or smaller.

Ball up some small pieces of paper.  For this I used an old AAA Tourbook.  The pages are thin like a phone book, so it worked well.  Also compact the paper balls pretty well.

What To Do:

Put down a piece of paper.  I was using the AAA Tourbook and they are the size of a 1/2 sheet of letter sized paper.  I used 2 sheets because the Tourbook has thin pages.  If you're using regular paper, you could just use one piece of paper.

In the center of the paper place one ball of lint, 2 balls of paper, and a few sticks or pieces of cardboard.  Each of my firestarters has about 4-5 sticks inside (I didn't use cardboard).

The pull up the sides of the paper around the items in the middle.  Wrap the paper around the contents and gather the paper at the top.

Tie the paper with the string, and make sure that the fire starter will fit through the mouth of your jar.  Don't make them too big!

Repeat until you have completed all of the firestarters you want.

Using The Wax:

 

Lay out a couple pieces of paper near the stove.  This is where you will be placing the fire starters after they have been coated with wax.
Boil some water on the stove in a pot that is larger than your jar.  After the water boils, you can bring it down to a simmer (so it is not so bubbly because that will make your jar shake around).
Put the wax into the jar.  It helps to cut the wax up a bit so it will melt faster.  
Place the jar into the boiling water.  Wait for the wax to melt.  I used a stick to stir it around.

After the wax has melted, take one of your prepped fire starters and place it in the wax.  Push it down with the stick.  Hold it down until you don't see anymore bubbles, and the fire started is completely coated in wax.  Sometimes you will have to flip the fire starter around.  It depends on how much wax you have.

After the fire starter is coated, place it on the piece of paper.  Allow it to cool for about 30 min or until it is not warm anymore.

I test burned one of my firestarters and it burned for about 17 minutes.  It was also very quick to light.  I took a lighter to one of the sides, and it started burning right away.

That's it!!  It was super easy and cheap.  Have fun with it, and happy camping :)