Fire In A Can(s) # 9 and 10

[Guest]

I found two more small SS pots with lids at Goodwill (I remembered to bring a magnet), and with the gift of some Presbyterian Church candles had accumulated enough wax for a couple small FIAC’s and more custom feeder bricks.

P1210074 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

OK, mostly I felt like tackling some simple shop DIY that required little effort or forethought. Clearing off a shelf and putting some stored pots and wax to good use fit the bill.

Banged the handles off the pots and replaced the lid knobs with something smaller. The lid doesn’t get hot, it is only used to snuff out the flames.

P1210068 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Those Presbyterian candles are not in keeping with the Church’s Scots roots. Those were some high quality candles, with a noticeably higher melt point than the 145F wax I have been using. Thanks Paul.

With the old candle stubs melted in a pot on the Coleman stove I filtered out the old wicks by pouring the hot wax through a kitchen strainer. Old wicks, and debris from one giant gaudy candle that was covered in decorative glitter. Thanks again Paul.

P1240083 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

I did not appreciate that better quality Presbyterian wax and effed up, melting those church candles for the first of three (once a day) needed pours/settles & cardboard wick soak ups into the pots. That better quality wax is at the bottom of the pot, where the flames, with some feeder brick action, will never reach.

Cardboard wicks cut to height (with a bit of pot hot wax and windscreen lip left on high) and pre-coiled for a spiral.

P1210071 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

That cardboard spiral wick does not need to be, really shouldn’t be, a tightly compressed spiral in the pot. The original Maine sea kayak guide versions use a tightly wrapped wick that filled the entire pot with no gaps, and the How-to videos show the same. A loose spiral, a half inch to an inch apart works much better. Think about a regular candle; it isn’t all wick.

Getting that spiral wick to hold in spaced position is the tricky part. The pre-coil (wrapped around a piece of pipe) helps. Stapling the center coil together in a circle, and adding some taller starter wicks spaced between coils helps even more. Not even close to a perfect spiral, but good enough.

P1210078 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

First pour results the next day, pot half full of wax – note the wax soaking upwards on the cardboard wick, and the resulting cratered depressions. Two or three pours, a day apart, resolves that.

P1230080 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

While the wax was melting I laid out the containers for another batch of feeder bricks, along with Citronella oil for one batch. And, what the heck, the last of the colorful “Magic Flames” for another. The muffin tins make perfectly sized feeder bricks for those pots, but I made some ice cube tray bricks for lesser feedings.

P1230081 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P1240085 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

When adding a feeder brick atop the cardboard wick it helps if the center of the spiral is further apart, and a little more wax buried, the rings of wick around the pot edge provide most of the flames, and the melting feeder brick snuffs out any exposed wick in the center.

P1240087 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

One last FIAC trick; if you want to blaze one up in seconds it helps to light them at home first. The initial burn, drawing wax up and charring the cardboard wick, is slow to fully flame, like a candle when first lit. But once lit, burned for a bit and extinguished with the lid the charred wick catches easily and the flame spreads quickly around the cardboard spiral.

Pre-charred for 30 seconds, not burned far into the wax.

P1250092 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Less than a minute after lighting the charred wick the next day.

P1250101 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

The last FIAC made, small pot #8, is doing kayak hatch duty on Everglades beachfronts and chickees (as was small pot 4 or 5 before it was burned out on an all-nighter for lack of feeder wax), so these are FIAC’s 9 and 10. All of the kayak-hatch or personal sized ones went to friends; I’m saving one of these for myself.

No doubt some shop visitor will be happy to leave with the other, and a supply of feeder bricks.

 

[scoutergriz]

I've found that those church candles are pure beeswax, where canning wax seems to have paraffin in it. A quick whisk (with one "stolen" from the kitchen, just before pouring helps keep the two mixed better.

 

[Guest]

I've found that those church candles are pure beeswax, where canning wax seems to have paraffin in it. A quick whisk (with one "stolen" from the kitchen, just before pouring helps keep the two mixed better.

I stir things in the melt pot with a cut off piece of cut off ash gunwale stock, the same wax covered piece I grabbed ten years ago and have kept ever since in the box of wax tools and pots. Helpful for moving used candle wicks to one side before scooping them up, and the floating glitter debris kinda stuck to it.

Aside from those Presbyterian Church candles (that was the second batch I received from Paul, the first was mailed to my home as a mysteriously anonymous FIAC gift. I never suspected Paul) I have been using 145F melt point paraffin wax, bought from Candlewic in bulk 5lb slabs.

https://www.candlewic.com/store/product.aspx?q=c49,p522&title=145-Melt-Point-Wax---4045EP

Candlewic had a killer “free-shipping” sale on 50 lb cases of that wax 10 years ago, and after many FIAC’s, and manymany feeder bricks, I don’t have much of that 50lb deal left. I may need to drive to Doylestown PA and pick up some up in person.

The feeder brick supply has consisted mostly of chunks of that Candlewic wax, augmented with 3” wide scented stubs that the wife candle-loving wife knows to save for me, along with any smaller stubs from home, and some crapty-wax Dollar Store Jesus candles. So the feeders may be a mixture of Lavender, Sage & Citrus and Island Mango scented, along with some Lord’s Prayer in Spanish.

Inhaling deeply, hmmm, I detect notes of Mexican prayer candles, tropical fruit and 70’s-hippy-girlfriend Patchouli, with an after-note of charred oak barrel and Sour Diesel ashes. A delightful mix.

By the time I add some citronella and funky flames to the feeder brick batches who the heck knows what all is in there. I do baggie segregate and Sharpie mark the really funky mixtures and citronella feeder bricks.

The “Magic Flames” are easily apparent as a blue-ish granular layer in the feeder bricks.

The funnest part of burning a FICA is, as always, sitting around, staring at the (funky colored or flavored) flames in some “No Campfires” or “Pack-out-the-ashes” fire pan venue, and putting the instant-out lid over the flames. Solo is fun, but especially in a group, “No flashlights please, just sit back and wait for your pupils to slowly low-light dilate”.

That is a constricted pupil blackest-of-black instantaneous experience. So weird, and so well appreciated as an illustration of how, under nothing but ambient moon and starlight, your eyes can slowly begin to perceive in the dark, without need of artificial light.

 

[Mike McCrea]

Fire in a Can Update

The Fire in a Can was a Maine sea kayak idea, or at least that’s where I first heard of it. They used a small cookie tin, a much tighter wick and just burned the thing out instead of adding wax “feeder bricks”.

The sea kayak versions, using hatch-sized stainless steel pots, have been a hit with Guides 2000 miles further south, and yet another hatch sized FICA is being constructed in Florida using the above.

The small diameter pot has presented some complications; too large a wax feeder brick will bury the cardboard wick and snuff out the flames. And crushing the charred cardboard wick with a wax brick does it no longevity favors.

A little discussion about how to prevent the brick-on-wick crush and overfill meandered down a few possible paths; hardware cloth screen (sharp, pointy edges), a large kitchen strainer, placed upside down with a dimple depressed in the top (bulky to carry and store, can’t have any plastic) before settling on what seems a likelier kitchen device solution.

https://www.amazon.com/Bellemain-Sp...8&sprefix=Grease+splatter,aps,232&sr=8-6&th=1

Gotta be stainless steel for the marine environment, flat for easy storage. I’m so sure that will work beneficially I bought one too. The FIAC ®evolution continues.

 

[Woodpuppy]

Interesting. Why is magnetic/nonmagnetic a concern? Some SS pots are in fact magnetic SS to work with induction ranges. I learned all about that when our range went tits up in June 2020. We replaced an old Kenmore glass top electric with a GE glass top induction and had to then buy new pots and pans. Our cast iron worked wonderfully of course.