Pill Bottle Fire Starter Kit
Kevin Felts 11.01.16
With stuff usually found around the house, or at least close at hand, let’s make a fire starter kit that fits in a medium sized pill bottle.
Items needed:
- Medium sized pill bottle
- Strike anywhere matches
- Alcohol prep pads
- Match strike pad or fine grit sandpaper
Start by removing the label from the pill bottle. For privacy reasons we do not want your personal information on something that can be lost. To get the glue off, use olive, canola, or some kind of vegetable oil.
Take a pack of matches, like the kind found at bars or casinos–the cheap kind. Or open an MRE and take the pack of matches out of the accessory pack. Cut the paper about 3/4 inch from the strike pad. This is where you hold the striker at. Then cut the paper near the striker pad on the opposite side.
If you do not have a pack of matches that you want to cut the strike pad off of, use some fine grit sandpaper.
Alcohol prep pads should be in a well rounded stash of first aid supplies. If you do not have any, buy some off Amazon.com, go to a local pharmacy, Walgreens, etc.
Insert the alcohol prep pads into the pill bottle, insert the strike pad, and finally fill the remaining space with matches.
My current pill bottle fire starter kit has 25 matches and 5 alcohol prep pads.
Why Alcohol Prep Pads
Rarely, if ever, do I use anything to help build a fire. Before I build a fire I spend several minutes rounding up tinder of various sizes, dried grass, and maybe pine straw.
Everything is ready before the first and hopefully only one match is struck.
I usually take a stick about the size of my thumb, lay it on the ground and build a lean-to with smaller sticks. I used to tell my kids we were building a house for the fire to live in.
The match is struck and put under the lean-to. The fire has all the conditions it needs to grow and provide warmth.
The above description is of an ideal situation. We may not always have access to dry tinder. We may not always have access to tinder of the exact size we need.
The alcohol prep pads provide extra help for when ideal situations are not available. Tinder damp from a rain last night? Green tinder, or from broken branches that have not fully dried? That is what the prep pads are for.
Build your fire a house, put the prep pad under the lean-to, light a match, and set the prep pad on fire. Once lit, the prep pad burns for several minutes, giving you plenty of time to add tinder.
