Petroleum Jelly Cotton Balls

I don't consider myself an avid outdoorsman, but I do like to learn survival skills. I especially like any that involve knives and fire!

My question is for anyone that has made petroleum jelly cotton balls. I whipped together two or three as an experiment, but I plan on making several more to have ready in case of an emergency. Here's the question. Do any of you just "smear" the petroleum jelly all over the cotton balls, or do you somehow melt the petroleum jelly so the cotton balls are completely saturated? Any help is greatly appreciated!

I've usually seen them put into a ziplock bag with the jelly and then sort of mashed around.


To me, pre-prepared stuff like the cotton balls are handy for hiking or camping or whatever, but not really a true practice of survival skills. Making fire with stuff you find in the woods is a lot more of a survival skill. I also suck at it. A lot.

True. Petroleum jelly cotton balls isn't really "survival skills." Poor choice of words on my part. I think emergency preparedness fits the cotton balls better, because in an emergency kit, everything should be readily available for use. I think just the fire starting aspect of my question had me thinking of survival skills.

As a side note, by sister and her husband are nuts about primitive survival skills! They do the whole stick rubbing thing to start fires! I tried it once, got a small bit of smoke, then gave up. Another time, I guess!

Well, at the college I go to, their motto is "learn by doing." I did just that. I melted some petroleum jelly and saturated a cotton ball. I may have gotten some water mixed in with it, so I'll try again. So far though, it seems that saturating the cotton ball makes it so a ferro rod doesn't work too well.

Don't saturate them buddy, you just want the outside well covered and then you can tear them open a little if need be to take a spark !

Try some cotton balls soaked in paraffin oil, I keep them in an old pill bottle or similar !

I've always done better with dryer lint than Vaseline soaked cotton balls, but maybe that's just me...

I find petroleum jelly soaked cotton balls all over the woods when I'm out there - you just have to know how to spot them in the wild. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Yup. Learned this the hard way! I've messed with the cotton balls and petroleum jelly before, but I guess I had high hopes that with more petroleum jelly they'd burn even longer! Well, I'm sure they'll burn longer, but they sure don't take a spark that way!

Thepitbulloflove, the nice thing about the petroleum jelly is that it burns a lot longer than just a plain cotton ball or dryer lint. For someone like me, I need all the help I can get when trying to start a fire without matches or a lighter. I just like to optimize my chances of success!

Oh! Tell me more!

More seriously, though, I'd like to know where to look for fatwood! I have some that I found/bought at the grocery store, but I'd really like to know where to look for it in a tree.

Take the cotton balls and kind of work the jelly into them by tearing it apart a bit and working it in again. Now- palce them in a baggie or one of those orange match tubes that are waterproof. You can also make some nice firestarters by using old candle wax- wood shavings and some candle wicks. Simply melt the wax in an old pot on the stove and pour in a bit of the shavings- now take the wick from old candles and lay them in an empty egg caron- after the wax is melted- pour mixture carefuly into egg carton and let dry. After all is dry cut the 12 sections apart and you should end up with 12 dandy fire starters with a small wick sticking out of each one. This will stay lit for about 10 minutes allowing you to get a good flame going under any conditions. I just tell all the gals in the family to save old parts of candles for me and I make them for everybody <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />. Hope this helps- Thanks

Fatwood can be hard to find till ya really know what to look for !

Here is some I found the other day....



Once ya cut it and see the colour you know it's fatwood.....



Then just cut some thin curls....



Add a spark and your good to go.....

Pitman; when I saw your first picture of the fatwood I had a sarcastic "oh, of course that's fatwood" thought. Once you showed the inside of the wood I recognized it as fatwood. That stuff is an amazing fire starter! I grew up in scouting, but they never taught us about all these ways to start fires. Even in "wilderness survival," I think I started a fire with a battery and steel wool, a ferro rod and steel wool, and maybe a magnifying glass? These methods seem much better to me!

I don't like PJ, it's too messy. I just use dry cotton and fatwood. Don't over saturate the cotton if you use PJ, or it's hard to light as you found out.

When I was in scouts we took the cups from those paper egg cartons and stuffed them full of dreyer lint or cotton balls. Then a coat of parrifin wax over it kept the lint dry. When you wanted a fire you broke the wax at the top and fluffed the lint up to catch sparks and the parifin and paper would follow suit and burn for a good little while to catch whatever wood you had. I dont know if its the best method but it worked pretty well for us.

The PJ balls work great for me. I've stored them in film containers mostly, but I also found a few empty cheap cigar tubes and have used those. What I do is take a length of jute and tie it into a big knot ball at the end and then drop it down the tube, leaving a decent piece of jute hanging out the top. I then take the PJ balls and stuff them in the tube. All I have to do is pull a little on the jute and a PJ Cottonball rises to the top. I think there are a good 5 or 6 cotton balls stuffed in to this. The jute obviously can be used as well to start a fire.

digs - that is a simple but GREAT idea!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I keep dry cotton balls in a waterproof jumbo pill fob. This holds 7 jumbo cotton balls. I attach a finger size piece of fatwood to the strike force with a rubber band. The rubber band could also be used when starting a fire.

On the school camp out I went on last week we had to build a fire with flint and steel, I was the only one who could do it. we had sawdust it does not start well at all. I haven't tried petroleum jelly cotton balls but they seem like they would well. I like to use drier lint to build fires just kinds collect it instead of throwing it away.

Pitman, what’s paraffin oil?

I know that in England the word “paraffin” means what Americans call “kerosene”. I suppose the same is true in Canada. Is “paraffin oil” the same as paraffin/kerosene?

Kerosene is sort of oily. When I was an apprentice I had to spread Malarkey to seal the joints between sections of flat roof as they were bolted together. My boss told me to use kerosene to get the black gunk off my hands at day’s end because, “Gasoline will dry your skin out. But kerosene lubricates it.”

Parrafin is the name for a large class of hydrocarbons, ranging everywhere from mineral oil to solid parrafin wax. Parrafin wax is used, amongst other things, in candles.



I was just experimenting with different fire starters, partly inspired by this conversation, and I've decided I'm going to make up a bunch of candle wax soaked cotton balls. They are less messy than the ones coated in petroleum jelly.


I've also decided to give up on my dryer lint as long as I've got three dogs and two cats in the house, filling our lint trap with animal hair.

MM- just dry a large load of bath towels to get good lint...I would hope that they are filled with animal hair...? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

EVERYTHING in my house is filled with animal hair. It floats around like tumbleweeds. My dogs shed enough hair to make several new dogs every day. I'm actually fairly certain my dogs violate the law of conservation of matter.


We sometimes vacuum twice a week and it doesn't even put a dent in it.



If you ever consider getting a couple of corgis... invest in hardwood floors. TRUST ME on this one.

So is parrafin oil the same thing as mineral oil?

Apparently not. I asked the O.E.D.

Paraffin, n

In full paraffin oil. An oily, flammable liquid mixture of hydrocarbons similarly obtained by distillation and used as fuel; esp. = KEROSENE n. Also: (a) paraffin (sense 1) in liquid form; (b) liquid paraffin.
liquid paraffin: see LIQUID adj. and n. Compounds 1.

Sense 1 is:

A whitish, translucent, waxy, flammable solid consisting of a mixture of hydrocarbons, obtained as a residue from the distillation of petroleum and shale and used esp. in candles, cosmetics, and polishes, and for coating and sealing.

MM, let us know how the candle wax and cotton balls work out. How saturated do you make them and do you leave an area uncoated?

They worked quite well when I tried them last night. We left some of the cotton exposed without any wax on it so there is something to take the spark.

Just use an old pot or soup can or something to melt some old candles, and grab the cotton balls with tweezers or chopsticks, and dip them 3/4 of the way into the wax, then set them aside on some foil or something to harden. Much less messy than petroleum jelly and they burn for a long time.

You’re safer heating the wax in a double boiler. Otherwise the wax can overheat and flair up, burning flesh or starting fires. Put your can/whatever of candle wax inside a pot with some water in it. That gives you a controlled, non flair melt.

Thanks

Ya'll inspired me - we made up about 30 or 40 of the wax soaked cotton balls tonight. They rule for fire starting <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

I am a big fan of using dryer lint. It starts up real nice. The last time I used it (about a week ago) I even put a drop of hand sanitizer on it and it worked even better. I always keep a small bottle of hand sanitizer in my kit. Hygene is a must! Or you could use it to spice up some cool aid...... Well maybe : )

just a wee dab of PJ will do ya! not too much! guish it around the cotton ball and when you use it FLUFF up the cotton ball.

You can also store pj cotton balls inside a large "slurrpy type straw.
I soak cotton string in paraffin wax. Afterwards I cut the string in 2 inch lengths to fit in me container.
It lights real easy or you can put a dry cotton ball around it to light.
I use 1/8 string, I heard you can use sisal as well

I just tried using these today for the first time the worked well and burned for about 3 minutes. by the way i like the cigar tube idea.

I think PJ cotton balls are great. And as somebody else mentioned, PJ has multiple uses. A tip with lighting PJ cotton balls is to stretch some of the cotton out before lighting, get it real light and airy (so you could see through the gaps), it'll catch sparks and light much easier.

i always bring pj cotton balls in the woods

northern1, where have you been?! welcome back man!

Hey N1! Where ya been?

Nice to see you back N1.
I like using the PJ cotton balls too.
Stretching them out is the thing to do.

Mustard Man, did you do a comparison between the PJ balls and the
cotton balls you dipped in wax?

Cheers

That would be good info to have. I dislike the petroleium jelly but it works so well. If wax has a similar results I would rather use wax.

Oh a wise guy aye.

I've been using Burts Bees hand salve mashed into cotton balls. great for the skin, lips, face, and starting fire. Burts Bees hand salve burns GREAT! (it has birch oils in it)

I;d rather use less messy wax

I also use it sometimes on knife edges to keep them from rusting.

Wow great news and less messey

I like burts bees products but won't buy them. They are very anti-ATV, 4x4 and a few other things that annoy me. Too bad their bug bite salve is great.

.....your right they are great fire starters......i just light the carton though..... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

instead of getting all messy...

just pull apart the cotton ball{in ziplock} & add the PJ

the vaseline doesnt ride in the fire kit but its in a pocket on my versipak

hehehe, must really CHAP them that I use my Burts while ATV'ing or 4x4'ing <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I found something that lights fairly easy, isn't messy, and is available at Home Depot. It's Char-Broil Fire Starter Packs. They're actually similar to some survival fire starters, but cost a lot less due to the marketing application of these. I think I only paid a few dollars for twelve, but they burn for a few minutes easily. They're also in sealed mylar(?) packages that ignite easily with a ferro rod. Yes, the package is ok to burn as it says it's non-toxic and the instructions say not to open the packages. Weber has something similar, but in a cube form. I'm not sure how those light with a ferro rod though, since they don't have wrappers to light.