survival hack

So I don't quit fishing in the winter. Plus I'm out bowhunting or walking the creeks looking for fossils. All of which have the potential in winter to be real bad if I would break an ankle or even just fall in the water if it's really cold. I do though try to be safe and I thought today I'd talk about my little fire starter kit and how I go about making it. At the very least you should carry a lighter with you. But I've had trouble enough with old corroded lighters that I don't want to stake my life on one working well enough to get a fire started in wet conditions. I carry something that will make a spark even when its wet, plus char cloth and cotton ball tinder. Char cloth is amazing stuff really. Just the tiniest spark has to land on it and it will catch and hold it, the spark will  then very slowly spread across the char cloth as you blow on it and will get extremely hot. I'll explain how to make it here in a minute. The cotton balls you rip apart into a pile of fluff them work a gob of petroleum jelly into the pile. This you then smush back down into a compact wad and store in a ziplock bag to rip apart and use when you need it. The advantage of the cotton ball tinder is that it takes up zero space and weighs nearly nothing but burns for quite a while, long enough to dry out even wet twigs if you start with tiny ones. To get a spark you can use any of about a zillion ferrocerium and magnesium rods on the market. Any Walmart or Meijer will have one in their camping section. You are only using it to start one fire in an emergency so you don't need a huge fancy one like you might take to the boundary waters or Alaska. Honestly the $1.99 one you can buy at harbor freight is as good as any for this. 
The char cloth in its little box and my fire starter rod then go in a ziplock baggie along with my ziplock of cotton ball tinder. All of this weighs nearly nothing. I then put this in the bottom of the waterproof box I keep my cell phone in along with, yes, a lighter. Now I'm pretty confident I can get a fire started under any conditions with this kit. It pays to practice a bit though, go out when everything is soaked or there is a snow on and practice. Besides that's pretty fun in and of itself.
Okay how to make that char cloth. It's super easy. First you need some 100% cotton cloth. Pillow ticking, and old tee shirt or do like me and use an old wore out pair of jeans. Next you need a small metal container that shuts tightly. There are literally thousands of You-tube survivalist videos showing guys using an Altoid tin. And that's what I used. Why not it's dirt cheap, well made and well, perfect. So you cut squares of the cloth to fit inside the box. Don't cram it too full though, I think it wouldn't char as well if it was packed in too tightly. You then put this over a fire, any kind of fire, I've used everything from a campfire to the grill. I used a little backpacking stove to make the char you see in the photos. If you have a tin that is airtight you might need to punch a tiny hole to let the gasses created by the charring process vent. By the way don't do this in the house it stinks. Especially if you are burning the paint off a brand new Altoid tin. As my tin sits on the fire I can see flames as the gasses vented out the boxes hinges burns off. That is why you need a pretty tight box so your cloth will char and not burn. Leave it on the fire till these gasses quit burning. This takes about ten minutes I'd guess at the most. I usually leave it on the fire another five minutes or so just to be sure. 
And that's it. Once it cools you have a little box full of char cloth squares that will literally catch and hold a spark better than anything on earth. If you want to get fancy you can certainly use a flint and steel with your char cloth instead of the fire starter rod and start your fire exactly the way Daniel Boone used to when he was tromping thru these same woods around here.