Some Ideas on Recycling your own Kindling for your Wood Burning Stove or Open Fire.
Chances are if you use our kiln-dried logs in your wood burning stove or open fire then you’re the type of person who cares about the environment and like to keep an eye on your own personal footprint on the planet. Or maybe you just like wood fires! Either way we thought we’d like to share with you some ideas on using recycled materials to get your fire started. Of course there’s our fantastic kiln-dried kindling but when that’s not to hand here are a few ideas to get you started.
Creating your own Kindling.
A few things we like to use to help get our fire started:
- Often you can strip some bark off our logs that’s already coming free. These are excellent for creating instant heat and flame.
- Don’t throw away those orange peels – keep them and dry them out on a windowsill or airing cupboard. Try to keep the peel whole and flatten out into little starfish shapes. Any orange, Satsuma or clementine will do. These make excellent pre-kindling material.
- Shavings of curling birch bark interlinked together like a paper chain burn fantastically well.
- Collect dry twigs and brush from your local park or from around your own garden. Make sure they are dry though! Also dried out driftwood from the beach.
- If I’m really stuck I still can rustle up some old-fashioned paper sticks – just roll newspaper into tubes and twist up.
- Pine cones not only burn well they also smell wonderful. Again make sure they are dry and brittle (not still green and hard).
- Nutshells! Keep a bowl to collect those pistachio shells. They won’t light a fire on their own but they will help in the mix. Monkey nut shells too!
Well, there’s a few ideas for starters. We recommend you keep a smaller basket beside your log storage unit which you can use for collecting material for kindling as you go about your day. Happy fire making!
Buy our Kindling
You can also purchase Kindling from Bestlogs Kindling Bags.