Is Dryer Lint Really The Best Fire Starter?

Intro today's video has been inspired by I don't know how many multiple comments I've received over the last several years every time I do a video about any sort of a fire starter without fail I always get at least one if not multiple comments that I use dryer lint it is not only free it is the best fire starter ever so in this video we're gonna kind of put that to the test I got a bag of dryer lint I've gotten a couple of commercial fire starters this is the backwards biker sfk one which I said last week I think was one of the best I've seen I've got my previous favorite the live fire and and of course I've got the old fat wood we're gonna kind of do a comparison that's what's coming up next here on survival on purpose welcome back to survival on purpose your Overview home for information and gear reviews related to camping survival in general preparedness for regular folks my name is Brian thanks for joining me so fire fire fire we're gonna talk again today about fire I know just last week at least at the time of this video I did a review of this sfk one survival if I hear from the folks in the backwoods biker and I really like the stuff it worked really really well I said in that video this may be one of the best if not the best kind of emergency fire starter that I have seen there's pros and cons to all these so previously to that as I said in the intro this live fire has been my favorite kind of go to emergency fire starter and it's just a commercial fire starter I guess is what you would call it it you just open the lid slides back on it it's got a little pad of stuff in here this is impregnated with some other stuff you light it when you can close it up reuse it as you can see this one's been used before so I think that's pretty cool it's very small and to fit in a lot of small spaces and then as you know my absolute favorite of all time is freshly carved is just fat wood and this piece that's been laying in my yard out here for about three or four years now in the weather just pick it up off the ground and use it which is one of the great things about fat wood and then of course I have the baggie here of dryer lint now a couple things before we get started I really like fat wood because fat would like it as you see you can pick it up off the ground it's got the residents in it and the terpenes in it which might cause it to be flammable also kind of preserve it so it's pretty much is free if you find it in the woods or you can buy a bag of it somewhere at Home Depot or whatever for 5 or 6 bucks but the wild call kind is my favorite I mean it has a lot of advantages but you do have to process it a little bit and then scrape it down and I'll show you that in a second the live fire is pretty good it's reasonably a water resistant which is good a good a good feature of that and it's kind of sealed up already but even if you submerge it and get it wet we did we've done that on the video before you can kind of scrape it off and dump the water off of it and you can light it with a with a Ferro rod and then the sfk one I don't think it's water resistant it's got its cotton here that's got a light and will break off a piece of the the accelerant part of it might be but the initial strike onto the cotton is if the Cotton's wet it's probably not going to burn and then I would say the same thing probably for dryer lint so what a resistance is always good in an emergency fire starter but you know you can put this stuff in some kind of a bag of your sealant and then it should be dry same thing with the sfk one if you keep it in a waterproof container and dry bag or whatever which is I recommend keeping a survival kit in the dry bag anyway there you go so I'm rambling so I'll try to stop at one point I wanted to make is that I know a lot of people say I don't carry that I carry this I carry that you know I use fatwood or whatever but I think it's a good idea and I believe I've heard other people who I would consider more an expert than me certainly I'm not an expert at anything but people who have a lot of experience almost all of them recommend carrying a feral roger cool everybody I know this is serious about it's got a Bic in their pocket or lighter in your pocket but aside from that also carrying some sort of just a surefire emergency fire right now you don't have to look around forward you don't have to scrape it you don't have to do anything if you're cold and you're wet and you need a fire you can get a fire going right now which is important so which without any more RAM let's take you down to the old dump top here show you what I got what we've got prepared and we'll just uh get us some fire going to get this thing going Testing okay so here we are got the fat wood which I scraped from just the my fat would stash here just with the back of the saw blade it's got a really nice 90-degree spine here so did that got a live fire here got a chunk of the backwards biker I said of k1 firestarter here we've got the old dryer in here and I got a pretty good sized chunk of it because I'm just I'm not a believer yet okay just be straight with you so we're just gonna start with go we're gonna see got a pretty good fire Ferro rod here this one comes with the this is one that comes with the MS k1 survival kit from ultimate survival my ultimate survival tips from David over there so you see it's been used pretty well so we're just going to try some scraping them and see how well this stuff works so first we'll do the a fat fat wood there we go okay and you can see of course is fat what it burns pretty good in the live fire what they say to do is just scrape this stuff up and kind of fuzz it up a little bit this is pretty old so we're gonna do that put the trail right in there and scrape it and you can see there it goes and this going pretty well we'll let it burn here's the sfk once survived a fire stephan1 just and that cotton just goes up man it's really good and then you'll see when this other stuff starts burning the accelerant really gets to it so the fat wood is sort of gone out I guess it wasn't dense enough the live fire will burn for gosh I don't know 20 minutes and we'll just burn risk so we'll go ahead and close that it'll burn forever I think you and you can throttle it down let's go ahead and try the the dryer lint okay hey well I stubborn pretty stinkin good okay it actually did it did pretty pretty quickly go up let's see how long it's burning had conversation with somebody my Boy Scout Troop this weekend about this and about synthetics versus cotton he actually made a good point that the synthetics could act as a as a sort of a fire extender or an accelerant because of the petroleum base of a lot of synthetics but so there's that you can see it's burning the flame doesn't seem really really high to me listen I'm telling you look at this sfk what I'm and this is not a commercial for sfk one I just yeah that's kind of the most recent one I did but I gotta say I really am impressed by it because I mean that stuff's just because the size of that flame coming off of that we're going to close up a lot fire because it'll burn for a long time I want to just demonstrate that and you can see the dryer lint it's burning but you got to kind of mess with a little bit it I guess it chars the outside and kind of doesn't get a lot of oxygen in it so tobacco is biker stuff is rocking the house man I'm sorry again Charlotte though it did light up pretty well they did good so okay by the way it's been three or four minutes now this thing is still burning like nobody's business it's a it's something else I'll tell you that look it's still burning a little bit of a gun on the dryer lint which is causing the dryer lint to burn but then it's whatever it is that stuff absolutely works great okay so there's Conclusion the extremely scientific testing portion of the video again we compared fatwood the live fire backwards biker sfk one and the dryer lint by the way just want to show you the backwards biker stuff is still stinking burning and everything else as gone is gone now the live fire to be fair would have continued to burn also I have no doubt that the thing burns like 15-20 minutes but I gotta say I had to find out a lot of people told me this stuff is great firestarter is the best firestarter I keep hearing this the best firestarter and so I'm honestly surprised I was not sure that synthetic and because we saw the synthetic stuff that we use in wool I watched a lot of wool socks and we'll stuff so find a lot of wool in here I was I was not sure it was gonna burn it's gonna catch and burn from the spark and so I'm pleasantly surprised that it actually did I'd say it's not a horrible fire starter it does a it did burning did get a good good job going it is definitely pretty much free right so you can definitely can um pretty much all of us have most of us anyway have dryers have lint so it's a really useful free source of a firestarter but is it the best firestarter there's no way that I could agree with that so if if you are one of the people that has left me a comment saying it's the best fire starter ever no disrespect intended but I completely disagree it's on it but will it work as a fire starter yes and is it the cheapest fire starter quite possibly because your expense for it is pretty much zero if you've already got a fire starter so if you already got a dry rather suit you definitely want to keep it dry you also want to keep keep this stuff dry although this again may be the best commercial we'll call it you know pre-made fire starter that I've seen in a long long time again pros and cons to all of them so bottom line whatever you use just make sure you have a way to start a fire in an emergency with you just in case and again my number one way is right here a big lighter always in my pocket other lighters are cool too but it's always good to have some sort of a fire starting material or medium to to use so and I look at it like this if it'll strike with a Ferro rod you know sure as heck strike was a big lighter so that's kind of like what I try to do I try to find something a little little light with a Ferro rod and because then I know I like it would be no brainer with a lighter whether you choose live fire fat wood and who wouldn't love fat wood sfk one survival fire killer good old dryer lint or the ever ubiquitous cotton balls in Vaseline just make sure you got a way to start a fire anyway I hope this has been helpful as always thanks for watching survival on purpose and thanks for doing all your amazon shopping through the survival on purpose links I really appreciate your support by the way I put out a brand new video every Friday and Saturday and very often random videos throughout the week there's another one right there behind me and if you click right down there in the corner and click that subscribe button and that little bell icon so YouTube will notify you otherwise they won't you won't miss a single video I really appreciate the support once again my name is Brian you're watching survival on purpose remember survival is not an accident so be prepared I'll see you next time