Preparedness: Fire Making Kit

I've put together some Fire Making kits for our 72 hour kits. When it gets a bit warmer, we will take our kits outside and practice making fires.

For this kit, I used empty Trader Joe's Green Tea Mints tins since I had an overabundance of them. Altoid tins work great too and most people use those, some prefer the tiny ones since they are more compact. This tin is under 1/2 size of the regular Altoid sized tins to give you an idea of size.

Items from left: TJ Green Tea Mints tin, nature cotton tinder, char cloth, mini compass (not for fire starting per say but it's tiny and this is a good place to stash it so it doesn't get lost in the back pack), sandpaper and waterproof matches (made by dipping in waterproofing), firesteel (to use by striking with a pocket knife), fat wood slivers for kindling/tinder, aluminum foil for using as windbreak if needed.

I made the char cloth in our wood stove by using a nail to poke a hole in the side of an altoid tin, cutting up strips of denim to fit the can (about business card size), closed the lid then put on top of hot coals. The tin smokes and flames shoot out the hole and sides like crazy for a minute or so then the smoke returns. Once the smoke stops, I removed it from the flame using fire proof gloves and let it sit on the hearth until cooled. Viola! Char cloth to catch sparks for starting a fire.

Do you have a fire starting kit? What items to you keep in your fire starting kit? If you had to start a fire could you do it with something other than matches or a lighter? Practice your fire building skills now, not only outside but if you have a fire place or wood stove, inside as well. Also practice on the bar-b-que grill. What if you didn't have charcoal? Could you make your own? Create other types of fire in your grill?