Make Your Own Pull Pin Fire Starters!

A good camping list would generally include some good fire starters. In today's Instructable, I'll be showing you how to make an all in one fire starter that does not require an external source of flame for ignition. It's also water resistant so you can have this lying around for very long period of time without it's usability being affected by dampening and it works fine even after being dropped in water, so you can be sure it won't fail during camping.

It burns with a decent size of flame and doesn't get blown out by wind (except the wind's got a beef with you) and lasts long as well. The least duration for the one's I've used is about 8 minutes while the the longest went on for a solid 13 minutes (due to differences in their diameters). The last gif is a demo with a small pile of dry twigs and it caught fire in few minutes of putting the fire starter beneath it.

It's pretty cool to ignite too.

DISCLAIMER: This is a potentially dangerous project due to it's level of flammability and chemicals used, as such, adult supervision is a must and items used should not come in contact with food neither should it be ingested. I shall not be in any way responsible for damages that may be caused due to neglect.

Matchsticks (several matchboxes, depends on how many fire starters you want to make)

Shoe making thread (or any similarly strong and durable thread)

Tissue paper

Candle

Paper tape

Cotton balls

A pair of pliers

A pair of scissors

A ruler

Sewing thread

Paper gum

Starting, we'll make the part of the fire starter that actually starts the fire. This forms the core of the fire starter and bursts into flame when pulled apart rapidly.

The simple principle behind this is that we have two layers of matchsticks separated in between by the rough side of a matchbox. These arrangement is tightly wound together and when the rough side of the matchbox is forcefully and rapidly removed from in-between the two layers of the matchsticks, it rubs against the heads of the matchsticks to generate friction which ignites the matchsticks. The flame produced burns along the matchsticks' length and also ignites the rest of the fire starter.

To make it, I picked a matchbox, selected six matchsticks with nice round heads and arranged them into two groups of three's. I cut a small length of paper tape to hold the three matchsticks together by wrapping it around them.

I took an empty matchbox and cut out the rough strip on the side and folded it over with the rough face outside. Then I cut a 25cm length from the shoe maker thread, tied it into a loop and heated the ends to melt it and ensure it never unties. You want to make sure the thread length is not too short so as to give your hand a better clearance from the flames.

I passed the rough surfaced strip into the looped thread, then placed it in between the two layers of the two matchstick sets and firmly wrapped the piece around with paper tape.

Paraffin barrel, LOL. Fancy name, couldn't get a better one. This is the the part that soaks the paraffin wax in and stores it there until the time comes for it to rise as flames from the bed of it's ashes.

When the pull ignition tab starts the flame, it heats up this surrounding tissue coated and lined with paraffin wax causing the paraffin to start to melt and burn as fuel together with it's tissue core.

I made this using tissue paper as it seems to strike the balance between something very absorbent and not too soft, so it can be wrapped around the pull ignition core without tearing or it's fiber fraying apart neither is it too hard that it easily unfurls after being wrapped.

For the first part, I took a two sheets' length of tissue paper and folded it to the width of my ruler which is approximately 3cm (actual: 2.7cm), after which I used the ruler to press on the fold so it holds its form. Next, I applied some paper gum on the pull ignition core and rolled it along the length of the tissue paper. I made sure it was very tight. (The ones that were loose looked bigger though, even soaked in more paraffin and burned much longer, but were difficult to work with due to the increased susceptibility to tearing. I'd recommend making the tissue paper longer for a longer burn instead).

As you can see from the second image, there's still some free space around the head of the ignition core, the second layer of tissue paper would wrap around the first and be tall enough to reach the head of the ignition core thus essentially forming a hollow around the head of the ignition core where I'd stuff some crushed matchstick heads into.

The second layer of the paraffin barrel was made with a single sheet of tissue paper with it's breadth folded to the length of the matchstick, mine is 4cm. Then I applied gum to the starting margin and wrapped it around the first layer, securing it in place with the gum. Using the sewing thread I tied the tissue wrap in place. Now the hollow space around the head of the ignition core can be seen as in the last image.

Just like the title of this step states, all I did here was to fill the hollow in the barrel head with matchstick powder. It sounds simpler than it is though.

The matchstick powder was obtained by crushing the heads of several matchsticks, and it took time. With the pliers, I crushed the matchstick heads into an empty matchbox. I used up three matchboxes, 40 sticks each.

Following that, I filled the barrel head until almost full with the matchstick powder.

Next, I took a small piece of cotton ball and drew it out into a thin long piece, then rolled it in-between my palms into a "yarn". I used this to cover the head of the barrel by inserting it in a circular pattern.

The matchstick powder is supposed to help sustain a high temperature flare to melt the immediate surrounding paraffin wax and help keep the flame. One issue I later ran into during the demonstration was the eruption of flames it gives, alongside a loud burst of sound that follows, sounds cool and crazy but this makes it potentially dangerous and as such should not be directed to face before or upon ignition.

Now the fuel that powers and sustains our camp (grenade) fire starter.

I got a candle and cut it into several smaller pieces into a metal cup I made from cutting a soda can. Placed it on a source of heat to melt it completely until a clear (hot) liquid was obtained.

I went ahead and placed the fire starters into the liquid paraffin wax. Bubbles could be seen foaming out of the tissue wrap as the paraffin wax soaks into it. I left the fire starters in the wax for about 2 minutes to properly soak in the wax after which I removed them and hung them for the excess wax to drip out and the the wax within the tissue to solidify, set and cool. I left them hanging for about 3 hours.

By the time I went to check the fire starters, I could see already that all the surface was wax coated, it felt much more heavier too (due to the soaked in paraffin wax).

You want two things done properly here: That the tissue soaks the liquid wax in well as this ensures the long duration of burn, you also want to make sure the wax covers the entire surface of the fire starter for a proper water resistance.

A way of getting these done is to melt enough wax to ensure the fire starters are completely submerged in it.

The picture shows the final result of the make. They came out good.

Very solid, it bounces a little on solid surfaces and gives a kinda metal/wood sound. All the parts are held well together by the wax and doesn't seem to bulge at all even after several drops. Pretty durable for rough handling which is usually the fate of things like this, LOL.

The first GIF shows the ignition process, I passed my finger into the pull thread and firmly held the fire starter with the other hand, then rapidly and forcefully pulled the tab (the matchbox rough side) out with the thread to create an instant ignition which continues to burn and then reaches the matchstick powder where it erupted with a fairly loud sound.

The second GIF demonstrates how effective it is at making fire. I gathered a small pile if dry twigs for the demo and soaked them with water (the covered the water logged floor with dry sand), I then pulled my fire starter apart and placed it under the wet pile. The pile started to give off flames after about 7 minutes. Thus it works for making camp fires even after a downpour.

The third GIF shows a problem I encountered, the pull tab (the rough strip of the matchbox) was tightly held in place and it wouldn't come out so the pull thread ripped it in half! To improve on this, I figured out lining the pull tab with something much more durable like a plastic film (from a plastic water bottle) cut to the same size and placed inside of the pull tab would prevent the pull thread from ripping it into two halves.

I also do think of finding something gentler in combustion in place of the matchstick powder for a substitute. Whatever I come up with, I'll surely update it here or write a new instructable implementing the newfound improvements.