I have a little esbit stove that I hardly ever use. One of the big reasons is that the esbit tabs are kinda pricey and I’m cheap. Somewhere on the internet I once saw a guy make his own. I had the idea to try to make my own and see how they would work. My main concerns would be it has to be cheap, work well and be easy to make. I think I accomplished that easily let me show you how I did it.
For most the items needed you can get them from the trash. I went to my apartments laundry room for the dryer lint. The toilette paper roll was saved from going in the trash. For me reusing always out ranks recycling. I bought Gulf Wax paraffin for this project. One pound for about two bucks. You could melt used candles for this to keep with the reusing aspect. The only thing you really need to buy is Vaseline. and I used about half of the travel size container. Total cost for this project about three or four dollars. I used about half a pound of paraffin. I figure you could make about 8~10 fuel tabs for that.
First step is to thoroughly combine the lint and Vaseline. I just mixed in a big bowl trying to make sure that as much is coated as possible.Once the dryer lint is coated pack it inside your toilette paper roll.
I melted down half a block of paraffin and poured it slowly into the roll. once its full it will leak out the bottom. I set it aside so that the wax at the bottom would firm and form a seal. Once the wax was set I melted down the rest of the paraffin block and half of another.
I let the roll sit until it had completely set. I cheated and put the roll in the freezer at this time.
The set roll ready to be sliced into tabs.
I sliced them about a quarter inch or so. You should be able to get about 4 or 5 tabs from each roll. 
The fuel tabs ignite pretty easy. I used the first one to test how long it would burn for. It burned for just a bit over 15 minutes. The flame at times got really big and was throwing off some serious heat.
I was very impressed with the burn time and heat given off by it.
Next up the real test. Can this homemade fuel tab bring 1 cup of water to a roiling boil and how long would it take. I decided if I could not boil water (which esbit tabs usually struggle with) they would be a failure and would need some redesign
I got out my old trusty Heiny Pot with exactly one cup of room temperature water. Once again the tab light very easy. This time is seemed that the it gave off a good deal of smoke and soot. I ended up having to open a window.
Here you can see that my pot is starting to become really sooty. I definitely prefer the cleaner nature of both alcohol stoves and the Jetboil stove. On the plus side I got a good roiling boil at about 5. This tab was able to be blown out for use later. I estimate that you could get as much as three boils from one tab.
The Pro’s and Con’s for the Survivalpunk Fuel tabs are
Pro’s
- Cheap! This come out to be about .45 cents a piece. At that price it smashes the commercial ones outta the water.
- Easy. I made these in about thirty minutes while doing some other house chores and enjoying a Shock Top or two.
- Efficient! By far these out perform all the esbit tabs I’ve ever used. I’ve never gotten a boil from a Esbit tab.
Con’s!
- Dirty! This things produce a lot of soot and smoke.
- Smell! They smell pretty bad. It took about an hour to get the smell out of my Apt.
In conclusion the Survivalpunk Fuel Tabs way out performed by expectations. If you like using an esbit type stove I recommend giving these a try. The heat output is much superior to Esbit. They are a fraction of the cost. The only real negative side being the soot produced. I would be fine with the shoot to save that much money. They are definitely a viable, lightweight alternative for boiling water a few cups at a time. Have any changes you would make? Have you done something similar? Let me know in the comments.
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