PET Balls – Fire Starters

I read on line about making PET (petroleum) Balls for emergency survival. It stated to start out with a wad of dryer lint, mush it really good with Vaseline then roll it into a ball for storage in an Altoids can or any another container you might have on hand.

When you want to use it to start a fire, it stated to spread it out a bit to form a cup. 

After spreading mine out a bit, it stated that any type of spark from flint and steel, fire steel, lighter, match etc, would light the PET Ball.  I tried to light it with a spark lighter, but after many attempts, I found that method did not work for me.  To get mine to light, I used a match, holding it to the Pet Ball long enough for the fire to start.

It started fairly easy and I had a pretty good flame going in a very short amount of time.

I didn’t time it but it seemed to take around 3 minutes for the flame to start dwindling.

 

Shortly thereafter, the flame had gone entirely out.  It did stay lit long enough to get a fire going if you needed it for camping or an emergency situation.  It might have stayed burning longer if I hadn’t placed it in snow.

You really should go to the site highlighted in red at the beginning of my blog to find out more.  You can use many things besides dryer lint as your fuel source.  You can even use Carmex for your petroleum.