electric charcoal starters - heat gun; looftlighter; etc.

[BlueKettle]

Hey all,
I've always used paraffin lighter cubes under the charcoal chimney to light the charcoal. Today I was doing a smoke using the snake/fuse method where I only needed to light one piece of charcoal to get it going at the end so I used a heat gun I'd bought recently for an unrelated paint removal project.

The heat gun worked pretty great. I think I had the needed one charcoal going in about a minute or two. It really led me to wonder if I shouldn't be using it all the time. Anyone use heat guns or other electric starting methods? If so, do you prefer them to the lighter cubes or oil soaked newspaper? I'd read about that looftlighter contraption which looks cool but never used one. Though it would seem this is fairly similar.

Can you still use a chimney with these electric starters? Should you?

[Darko]

 I use the BBQ Dragon, only because I got it on sale for 29 bucks.

[LiquidOcelot]

I use the BBQ Dragon, only because I got it on sale for 29 bucks.

is that thing worth it? do you still use a lighter cube to get it going? it's just a fan right ?

[greenweb]

I use the BBQ Dragon, only because I got it on sale for 29 bucks.

I think Darko had too much to drink tonight. You can't start a fire with the bbq dragon. It's just a fan.

[Darko]

Oh hell not yet! I gotta stay sober "ish" to reply to you.

Having said that, I misunderstood the original post.  I haven't used one of those loof things or a heat gun. I do have one of those electric loop things to start coals.  I find that using a starter to get the coals lit then using something like the BBQ dragon to accelerate the fire works great. 

[johnny 2 shack]

a bbq dragon that shoots fire ? now that would be cool . can you imagine lol ! i have tried the coil in a chimney ,laid it on it's side , too messy pulling it out and took a long time . gotta try a heat gun though sounds interesting , but for me so far i have found using a modified side burner ( found a can the same size as the as the side burner poked 4 holes in it and ended up with 4 supersize flames shooting into the chimney . if i'm in a big rush i'll hit  it with my dragon .

[BlueKettle]

Thanks for the replies, guys. I wondered about the wire loop into the chimney thing but I hadn't considered the difficulty of getting it out. I am super interested in that BBQ dragon though. That's sort of what I was thinking, maybe get one or two coals going with the heat gun and then let the fan work on getting it roaring quickly.