Wet matches don’t work! I know this from 1000% first hand, personal experience. When I was much younger I had an experience where I was boating with a friend of mine. It started raining while we were fishing and when we got to camp… we nearly froze to death! It was summer in South Mississippi and if you have ever been here… its hot as heck! So, to be freezing in summer in South Mississippi? Something was up with this! It wasn’t till many years later i read that people actually get hypothermia in the summer time. I couldn’t believe this, it actually blew my mind… until I researched it. Its true, you can get hypothermia even in the summer.

Hypothermia is defined as a significant and potentially dangerous drop in body temperature. The most common cause is prolonged exposure to cold. How do you get hypothermia in the summer you ask? Well, hypothermia happens anytime weather conditions, including rain, or water temperatures lower a person’s core body temperature below 95° F. People are less likely to be prepared for cold conditions during warmer months, summer weather exposure to the cold is more likely to turn into a deadly situation faster.

So… when we got back to camp we had a box of 300 kitchen matches. We were golden, or so we thought… Not a single match lit! We couldn’t start a fire to save our lives. We ended up driving the boat back to the truck at the boat launch and shivered with the heater on until we warmed up.

So now, I’m going to give you a real quick tip on how to make waterproof your matches. This way if you don’t have a lighter or ferro rod, and are unable to start a fire by other means you can still light that fire.

You will need a package of tea light candles, strike on the box wooden matches and a sandwich bag. These tealight candles have a metal base, you can pull the wax out and the metal base and that base is what we will use to melt the wax. Take the wick out of the candle and put the wax back inside the metal base. Now, I used an old camp stove to heat the middle base up but u can use any heat source you wish. Go ahead and melt the wax. In my video I used five matches. They are the strike on the box matches. hold your wax over the heat source until it’s melted. Once your wax is all melted, you just take your match and dip it into wax. Roll it around then just let it dry. set it down and take your next match and repeat the process. I like to go back and do it again. Its the only time you won’t get in trouble for double dipping.

Now that you’ve dipped them in the wax, they have become weatherproof and if water gets on them they will shed the water. Just strike them on the box like you normally would and the wax actually helps them to burn a little bit longer. Now you can take them anywhere you want to go and you don’t have to worry about if they get wet.

Store your weatherproof matches in a sandwich bag, this way you can stick them in your backpack and if you don’t have a Ferro rod or a Bic lighter you can use these matches and start your fire. For two dollars and fifty cents you can make three hundred weatherproof matches. They burn longer and also they’re not going to get ruined if the water hits them. Another little tip is to put a piece of sandpaper in the sandwich bag with your matches.

Check out the video below from my YouTube channel on how to make these matches.
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