Here we go again. Wax and saw dust, smash them into egg cartons for easy sizing. I post a tutorial on this every year to help new burners.
When you add sawdust to your wax be careful-- the wax is oil based and there is moisture in the sawdust. It can easily foam up and overflow. DO NOT mix it on top of your stove, it will catch fire. My brother did this. DO NOT put water on a wax fire-- use an extinguisher or suffocate it with salt, baking soda, ash, sand, fire blanket, etc. Add saw dust (SLOWLY) until there is no excess wax in the bottom of the pan. Use a sppon to pull wax/sawdust mixture away from bottom of pan to check. PRO TIP: Pick up a cheap pan at resale store so you don't anger your significant other. Noodles give a rustic look, but don't absorb the wax. I advise against them after testing them out today. Push wax and sawdust into paper based egg carton. Let dry. When you need to start a fire, tear one off. The cartons make them stack easily for storage.
Good info on the noodles. I've got some pine I was thinking of noodling for firestarters. Would you advise doing cookies instead? Collecting the saw chips rather than noodles.
I do pretty much the same thing with an old slow cooker I have been ladling the wax over but mixing the wood in with the wax is a good idea.
I use little paper ketchup cup type things with sawdust and paraffin/canning wax for my trailer park firestarters.
I made a bunch of them Thursday so I thought I would try them. Tomorrow morning I will load them into the stove and be done with them.
It's actually not very time consuming at all. I spread out the cups while the wax is melting, dump about 5 inches of tobacco can worth of sawdust in the melted wax, mix, and start slinging spoonfuls. 30 minutes? for the amount I did start to finish probably.
I had to quarter some oak rounds to get them on the splitter. The noodles will be made into this years fire starters. I give a bunch out to fellow burners at Xmas.
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Good thread, Grizzly Adam. I do something similar, but I use noodles! They are pine noodles, and I don't mix the noodles and wax together before pouring. I roll noodles up into balls about 1.5 in in diameter, drop the ball into the egg carton (sitting on wax or parchment paper), and fill the cups with wax left over from Mama's jar candles. I either just let 'em air dry or, if cold out, sit the carton outside. One will burn for 10 minutes.
I do the same.. noodles in cup cake wrappers.... drizzle on some parafin and give away to fellow Burners for Xmas. They burn a good 5-10 min and I find they are a great initial chimney warmer to help get a good draft started. I also add cloves and or pine oils to the wax so they smell nice .. helps with gift aspect but honestly all that nice fragrance goes right up the chimney once you light them!
Maybe adding the noodles first would work better if absorption is desired. Though any wood absorbing wax is a tough job. I once needed to through soak 1/64” Birch veneer with red dye. Not an easy task. 100lbs of pressure in a oscillating vessel was the only way I found to work. Wax is a lot thicker than dye
Very nice. I make the mine when we are hanging around our camp site in the summer. Although I use the same materials you method is better. Sometimes we use dryer ling instead of the sawdust which works good but the sawdust is better in my opinion.
