Since I'm "working" from home, I decided to try my own. I recalled a long while back about someone making starters out of wax and toilet paper. I poked around a bit and found some recipes on the internet, one used sawdust. I combined those and made some up.
Started with sawdust in the bottom of a disposable pan, then poured paraffin over the top until covered. While still liquid I laid a single ply of tissue over the top, then covered with more wax. It made a couple dozen 2" or so squares.
I compared it to a Weber starter cube. The tissue served as a wick and I'm not sure how well they would've lit without it. At initial light the Weber took off like crazy, while the homebrew looked pretty wimpy.
After a minute though the homebrew started to catch up, and by a couple minutes in it out-flamed the Weber.
By 5 minutes in homebrew was rockin', and Weber was starting to fade. The homebrew lasted 7 minutes total while the Weber went around 8 minutes, but the last 3 or so minutes of the Weber was a small insignificant flame.
The downside to the homebrew was the leftover wax residue, while the Weber left nothing but ash. The plus is cost. With the Weber's running $5 for 2 dozen, these were free. I think you could make a couple hundred with a 5 pound block of wax. Neither one had any kind of odor, although be careful not to use your wife's bayberry cream candle...
One more test. In the last photo I broke one of the 2" squares into four 1" squares and lit 2. They last about 5 minutes and would've been plenty to start charcoal. The advantage in this was a lot less wax.
Conclusion: Great fire starters, excellent for a campfire or cook fire. Ok for charcoal if you can start the chimney on the ground, but not sure I'd make a habit of using the charcoal grate due to the wax. YMMV.
Topic: duraflame firestart cubes? (Read 1058 times)
