We ran into newcomer Exotac at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market earlier this month in Salt Lake City. These guys know fire, or at least how to start them and we were lucky enough to get a chance to take a look at a couple of their upcoming products.
They will soon be offering tins of natural fire starter tinder and candles. The tinderTIN fire starter is pinewood that is heavy with sap (fatwood or lighter knot) so it will catch a light and keep going. Two different tinderTINs will be offered including fatwood shavings and splinters. To create the candleTIN, Exotac experimented with an untold number of wick and base material combinations before settling on their current combination which offers 2 different styles of wicks. Additionally, each candleTIN features 3 wicks in the same candle. The hot burn wick is used for drying out tinder and boiling water. The temperature can be controlled somewhat by how many wicks you light at once. The slow wick combined with the large size candle will burn for 30 hours! I haven’t seen tinned candles like these since the old survival candles that came in the multi-place crew kits.
They also developed a new ferocerrium rod called the fireROD specifically for use with the Habilis Bushtools Bush Tool. It fits right in a special slot on the sheath and features a waterproof tinder storage capsule in its shaft. The actual rod is replaceable and burns at nearly 5500 deg f.
