h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have to say that in my years of making fires I've found that if you light the beast at the paper/kindling stage thereby giving the kindling a chance to catch before piling on the bigger wood, the resultant fire is more likely to be a success ... let it burn for a moment or two and then bung on the big chaps.

Yeah, it probably does work out better - depends a lot on how big your kindling is, of course. I guess my kindling was always so small that it didn't catch the big wood very well - it would burn out too quickly, so the more flames it had, from the paper as well as the kindling, the better chance I had of it actually catching.

I don't have that problem since I started using firestarters (shameless plug for A863840) to start my fires - those little things burn long enough to get the big wood going, unless the big wood is just too wet, in which case it still needs some dry wood/larger kindling in there to get it going.

Thanks for reminding me of what it's like with just newspaper to start my fires!

Possible addendum:

If all else fails - fire up the blowtorch. Works for me.

You don't know how close that is to how I do things...


The lighters that I normally use to light my firestarters are these long nosed things that are designed for lighting candles and fires. I affectionately call mine a "flame thrower".