Egg Carton Fire Starters!

[4suchatimeasthis]

Yesterday at church we were handed a massive stack of egg cartons, the non-styrofoam type (yes, I farm out prep-work, lol, and have people saving egg cartons for me), and hubby casually mentioned something he learned in the boy scouts. He said they would cut apart the carton into little individual sections, then fill them each with lint and sawdust, then cover the whole thing with a thin layer of paraffin wax, and use it for starting fires. I thought that was pretty brilliant!

Another use for egg cartons, only the non-styro ones, is to use them as seed starters.

[ladyhk13]

That's funny since I have been saving all of my lint from the drier for a couple of months now to do that exact thing. Mix the lint and sawdust together, put it in the egg holes, cover with any kind of wax you have...it can be parafin or even all those candles that have been used to the point where they are too small for any practical use anymore where most people throw them away - combine them and melt them down, you can even use old crayons. Get some thick string to use as your wick, position in the center and then pour your wax over your lint and sawdust. Let dry and then cut your carton into sections. They are easy to store since they are small. I would do all of this while the carton is still in one piece though and cut after the project is done. It would be easier to fill.

Great to bring this up 4such! It is even a great project to do with the kids except for pouring the wax. Thanks!!!

[4suchatimeasthis]

Ahhh! Good idea on the old candles and crayons! I have 4 kids, 3 of them 7 and under, so I have LOTS of broken crayon pieces around. I can have the girls start saving them! Thanks, Lady, awesome idea!

[David Armstrong]

Not to necro-post, but I juszt ran across this and thought I'd mention you don't need the lint and sawdust. It's fine if you want to add them, but paraffin/wax alone will work pretty good and allows the firestarter to double as an emergency candle.

[Sniper-T]

Nice. but you would need something to put it in. a metal lid or something.

When I make these, I just rip the cover off the egg cartons, leave the whole tray together for easier handling while stuffing and pouring, then they stack on a shelf easy too.

[ladyhk13]

David, I don't mind when someone comes in and adds to an old post. I'm sure there's hundreds here I haven't even seen yet!

[Gunfixr]

Well, I should have enough dryer lint, just need to stop throwing away the cartons.

[Illini Warrior]

this remind me of an incident with my Dad, who passed a number of years ago .... went over to his house for a vist ... he was preparing to make some of these fire starters .... he had his chain saw out and was making sawdust ..... alot of extra work just to get a pan full of chips .... I grabbed a 5 gallon bucket and took my Dad for a ride down the road .... a cabinet shop, I'm familiar with, had their big dust collector out back ..... like most of the collectors it leaks and has piles of fine wood dust around it .... 2 seconds and we had a bucket full .... the student becomes the teacher

[Socalman]

So great to find things when you dig into old threads. When I was in Cub Scouts we made the same type of thing but we used one piece of charcoal in the carton and then added the was. Certainly lint and sawdust are cheaper!

Love the wealth of information on this site!