This is a recipe, but not for food. Unless you're a termite, maybe. Just bear with me.
While trolling the interwebs one chilly morning, I saw instructions for making firelogs at The Survival Sherpa. We have a woodstove, but it is a crappy one (which is why we're building a yurt in our living room---stay tuned for an update on that eventually). And last winter, our wood was pretty crappy too. Word to the wise: maybe don't expect too much from anything you buy on Craigslist that some crazy dude delivers in his personal truck for about 2/3 the price of more professional competitors. But I digress. The point is that it can be pretty hard to get a good fire going in our woodstove while we try to light our damp, near-green firewood. And buying those Duraflame things feels lame (and gets spendy). So here is one solution:
Step 1. You'll need: 2 plastic buckets, a drill, and a drill bit.
We had a couple of old kimchi containers laying around, so we paid nothing for this. But you can get two five-gallon Homer buckets from Home Depot for $2.85 each. (Note: you can make big firelogs and saw them in half, or even into pie slices. Just depends on the size of fire you want and how long you want it to burn.) Drill holes all over the damn place (I used a 3/16" because it was around, but size isn't too important) on one bucket. Specifically, all over the base of the bucket, and about halfway up the sides. Keep the second bucket in tact.
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| Dog not included. |
Step 2. You'll need a bunch of recyclable paper/cardboard/egg cartons/whatever.
We are always inundated with junk mail. And we eat a lot of eggs. If you, too, have an abundance of recyclables to choose from, go with the less colored, non-glossy stuff. But just about anything works. Tear it all up as small as you feel like tearing, and place into the holy bucket. Place the holy bucket into the unholy bucket, and cover all the stuff with water. If you're in super eco-friendly mode, do all this during a heavy rain and let that fill your bucket. This gives you bonus hippie points.
Step 3. You'll need patience.
Wait until it's all soggy. I waited about 72 hours. Overnight would probably work in a pinch.
Step 4. You'll need... something sharp that rotates fast.
I used a food processor because I was lazy. The guy who made the original post fashioned together a custom drill bit by welding a table saw blade to a steel shaft. This approach gets you way more DIY-awesomeness points. However you do it, the objective is to turn your wet recyclables into a colorless, formless mush.
Step 5. You'll need something heavy, more patience, and a dry environment.
Remove the mush-filled holy bucket. Fill the unholy bucket with the heaviest stuff you've got and put it inside the holy bucket, so that it's squeezing the mush into a thick brick. The heavier the stuff you put on top, the more water should ooze out of the holes in the bucket. Let this sit for a little while (I waited about half a day), until all the water that's going to drain off, drains off. At this point the paper mush should be dry enough to be removable from the bucket without falling apart. Remove it and place it in a sunny area.
Note: If you're doing this during a particularly rainy few weeks, you may be kind of screwed. So I suggest coming up with some other project that involves leaving the oven on low for a while (I dried cranberries at my oven's lowest setting: 170F). Then you can place the firelog in the bottom of the oven without feeling bad (or losing those bonus hippie points you got from rainwater collection). I also put it into the oven any time I was done baking something else in there, and just let it sit. After a few days of having forgotten about it, I checked on it and it seemed pretty dry. Success!
Now you can light fires with ease. Note that the harder you press down on it in step 5, the harder it'll be to light. But the less you press down, the shorter the fire will last. So play around with the density however you like.
