Monthly Archives: January 2015

Making Firestarters

Over the weekend I made wax/sawdust fire starters for use with the wood stove.  I had very little of my original sawdust left so I stopped at the Amish saw mill where he gave me a bucket full, but the sawdust was very fine and moist.  I mixed it with my remaining sawdust, set it near the wood stove to dry and stirred it occasionally.  I put the dried sawdust in empty egg carton containers; leaving room for the wax to pool.

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I bought 6 large blocks of paraffin canning wax through Amazon and heated 3 of them to a liquid state on the wood stove.

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I poured the molten wax into the egg carton molds and stirred each egg holder to ensure the wax flowed to the bottom of the carton and all sawdust was exposed to the melted wax. Below you can see the liquid wax pooling in the cartons as it cools.  I made a total of 78 fire starters.  I have about a dozen of my older fire starters so the total should last the remainder of the year.

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