Do These Five Campsite Items and Snacks Work as Fire Starters?
Just like when you bake a cake, you need ingredients to start a campfire.
First, you need heat. That comes from matches. Then you need oxygen. As long as you’re lighting a fire outside (and you’re on Earth), oxygen is all around you. Last, you need fuel.
That’s where tinder, kindling and firewood come into play.
Striking a Balance
Starting a fire isn’t as simple as holding a match close to a piece of firewood.
You have to build your fire slowly using tinder, kindling and logs. Tinder is anything that burns quickly after you light it. Think of this as step 1 in the recipe of getting your fire burning. Kindling is step 2 in that process. If it can catch on fire easily but not burn as fast as tinder, it qualifies as kindling.
Like a chain reaction, you can arrange your fire fuel in a way that once the tinder catches fire, it ignites the kindling — which slowly catches your larger fuel wood that will burn for a long time. But it all starts when your match meets tinder.
BL-Tested Fire Starters
So what makes good tinder for a campfire? You probably know dry twigs and leaves do. But what about some other items you might have stashed away on a campout?
We put five campsite items and snacks to the test. Guess if each item will work to start a fire, then play the corresponding video to see if you’re right!
Note: We did the testing so you don’t have to. Don’t experiment with tinder at home.
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