Sunroom Schoolhouse

I absolutely love the look and function of Fatwood fire starters, but there are a lot of DIY firestarter recipes out there. Also, we have a lot of pinecones in our front yard. They fall on our cars and roll around in the luggage rack, unexpectedly startling us when we turn for the first time on a drive.

So finally I decided to test a few firestarter recipes and this is my favorite. It uses my beeswax candle setup, a bunch of wick and our homegrown pinecones.

Equipment:

-pinecones: dried, spread out – not green ones that are still tight together
-beeswax: you can use any wax but we generally only use beeswax for projects and candles, you can’t beat the way it smells. I have found this to be the cheapest yet reliable beeswax
-melting pot: I use an old frothing pitcher and this crazy hot plate/lab stand I bought during covid to teach chemistry at home. They make wax melters that probably work better but I just like that this one also allows for magnetic stirring during chemistry experiments. Though, if buying again I’d opt for temp control.
-wick: I used a thin wick that is really only thick enough for tapers or this kind of non-candle use.

While the wax is melting, tie a simple loop of wick around the top of the pinecone, then thread the rest through the pinecone itself. We initially just wove the wick through the pinecone, but discovered when dipping that actually tying them on really helps since they have to support the weight.

Dip the pinecones in the wax at least once – you don’t need to build up a bunch of coats here, especially if you are going to be burning them in a stove, but just enough to help turn the pinecone into a slower burning firestarter. For campfire use you could do a few coats perhaps.

Let them drip completely until the wax stops running, then lay them out to dry on newspaper or paper towels.

And that’s it! When you set them in your fire, turn them so the wick pokes out the bottom, then the flame can travel up the wick into the pinecone. 1-2 of these really give a stead burn. Great for camping as well. Overall, a very easy and safe project (you can see our two year old dipping a pinecone there!) but definitely some risk with the hot wax. You don’t want to leave these hotplates with wax on them too long because especially with mine there is no way to turn the temperature down!

We’ll see if these end up replacing our 25lb boxes of Fatwood firestarters. They are easy to make and pretty fun all in all – if they function well for daily use, maybe we’ll have to make them in big batches next year!