A reliable option to newspaper

If you have trouble getting your fires started, maybe this will help

Personally, I have never been very successful using newspaper to start my stove.  This may be incompetence on my part, or it may be the stove design, or it may be the size and shape of my kindling.  In any case, the air inlet from the stove quickly blows out the fire in newspaper.  In fact, it will blow small flames in most anything.  So, if anybody else has these problems, here is my solution:

I cut strips of heavy absorbent paper about 10" wide and 12" long, and roll them into 10" long tubes, about 3/4" in diameter.  I happen to be using "red rosin" paper since I have a bunch of it left over from doing a hardwood floor, but other stuff would work too.  I put a rubber band around the tube to keep it from unrolling.  I do this about 100 times, or till I get tired.

I dip each end of each paper tube in melted paraffin, so that about 3" of each end gets soaked, and I let the waxed tubes cool off.  You can make a lot of these with a pound of paraffin.  I remove the rubber bands and cut each tube in half, so that I have 200 tubes 5" long.

One of these placed at the bottom of a pile of "kindling", meaning anything from small sticks to 2"x2" lumber will ignite the pile, 100% of the time, in about 1 minute. It won't blow out, and there is really very little paraffin per tube, maybe a teaspoon full or so.  I pile the wood log-house fashion, and get a "flash fire", I guess you guys call it.  (This igniter is only necessary when there are no coals, or very few.)  When the kindling burns down in half an hour or less, there are hot coals and the stove is at 400 degrees.

Donald Girod
January 2001