Egg Carton Fire Starters

Since I was camping last weekend, I wanted to take advantage of the trip to test out a homemade fire starter. Back in May, I wrote an article called 5 Campfire Starting Tools

In researching starting a campfire I had run across many different tips and techniques. But, I wanted to try the Egg Carton Fire Starter tip submitted by Par:

I take dryer lint and push it into the cups of a cardboard egg carton. Then I melt wax and pour it over the entire egg carton, trying to soak it as much as possible. I use one cup per fire. I usually have successful fires with this type of starter. Please do not use Styrofoam for this project, it melts and gives off noxious fumes.

So I gave it a shot!

Materials Needed:

• Dryer lint
• Cardboard egg carton
• Unscented candle
• Matches

I’d been saving my dryer lint just to try this (gross, I know!) and a cardboard egg carton. I filled each of the holes with as much lint as it would hold. It was basically one load’s worth of lint per egg holder.

Then, I lit my candle and waited until I had a pool of wax. I then poured the wax from the candle over the lint. I was trying to form a seal over the lint and soak as much wax as possible into the cardboard.

The big white globs in the photo? That was cooled drips and puddles of wax I heated over the flame and then pressed into the lint.

I know what you’re thinking: this would have been a lot easier with a block of paraffin and a double boiler. And you’re absolutely correct except for a couple of things: I don’t own a double boiler (or a pot I could sacrifice for the name of a blog post!) AND I’m flat-out dangerous when it comes to open flames and wax! So I figured that the candle would be safer for me. Feel free to use a double boiler if you’re making a large batch of these starters.

It took me about 3 hours from start to finish. Most of the time was waiting for enough liquid wax to accumulate on my candle to then pour over the lint. After fussing with it all evening, I was wholeheartedly ready to report that this wasn’t worth it.

But I was wrong about that!

When I got to test this out on Saturday night, I made a little teepee with my wood and set a single fire starter in the middle. Now, as you can see from the photo at the top of this article, my wood was NOT kindling. It wasn’t even small!

I just lit the edges of the egg carton fire starter with my utility fire lighter and that was it. There was no newspaper, pine needles, grass, or twigs. Just one little fire starter and go.

One part I really liked about making these fire starters was that it really didn’t take a lot of wax for each egg cup. I wasn’t trying to form a solid block of wax over the lint, just enough to hold it in place. As soon as the wax was cool (about 10 minutes after the last pour) I broke the egg carton apart with my fingers and put the 6 cups I made into a zippered baggie.

The cardboard egg carton fire starters are basically free and pretty easy to make. The only thing that isn’t so cool about these is that they aren’t very water proof.

Readers Weigh In:

• What is your favorite homemade fire starter?
• Have you ever made egg carton fire starters? How did they work? What did you use to fill the egg cups?

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