My brother is a seed breeder, and years ago he gave me a big bag of shucked maize cobs – several hundred I’d guess. He said they were good kindling. They are – if you light your fires with old diesel, the way he does 🙂 While they do burn well, they take a bit to get started.

Also many years ago, a bee-keeper asked if he could put a few hives on our place, so of course we said yes. Afterwards, he asked if we’d like some honey as a thank you. Sadly one of us is allergic, so we said “how about a little beeswax? We could make some candles”. Next day he shows up with FIVE KILOS of beeswax. So we made candles. After which we had at least four kilos left:-)

So I made firelighters.

I put the wax in a tin and put the tin in a saucepan of water, then simmer the water until the wax is liquid. You need enough wax to get 5-10cm of molten wax. While it’s melting, I grab a few cobs and get any stray kernels and silk off them. I lay out a bit of paper and a few twigs of bamboo to be a cooling rack, then dip the cobs in the wax. One at a time or as many as will fit, just be careful not to raise the wax level so far that it spills out of the tin!

After a few seconds I pull them out, let them drain excess wax back into the tin, blow on them to reduce drippage, and lay them on the twigs to cool properly. After twenty minutes they are ready to be put into a container and be used later as fire starters.

I’ve been doing this for years. There has been no noticeable decrease in the number of cobs I have in the big lidded plastic container (to keep them dry and safe from pests). Nor has there been much of a decrease in the amount of beeswax I seem to have left.

I wrap a bit of waste paper around a cob and light the paper with a match. The paper gets the wax alight, then the cob burns for a few minutes, helped by the wax. By that time the fire is generally well alight. It’s possible to light the cob directly, but it takes a few matches.

Here’s a pic of a bunch of cobs cooling. The weird colour is because a Small Person dropped a crayon into the melted wax…

PS: Safety tips: Have cold running water available in case you get hot wax on yourself. Leave the tin in the saucepan – harder to tip the tin, and if you do the wax will go into the saucepan. If little people are involved, do this at ground level, not on a bench, move the tin from the hot saucepan to a second, cold one without hot water, and watch out for little fingers going into the wax!

Once molten, the wax stays that way in the tin for ages, and forms a deceptive skin over still-molten wax. So when you’re done, put the tin well out of reach in a safe place until the wax is completely solid again.