On 13-Sep-2007, "Mike S." > wrote:

> I recently purchased a charcoal chimney starter, followed the
> directions, and it basically did nothing. I stuck 2-3 pieces of wadded
> newspaper in the bottom, filled the top part with charcoal (not to the
> the very top), then lit the newspaper on fire in multiple places.
> 20-30 minutes later the whole thing was barely warm. The bottom
> charcoals were barely warm.
>
> What happened? Any ideas? I'm thinking that it may be the charcoal.
> The kind I'm using is 60% bigger than Kingsford's charcoal which is
> probably the standard size. Although, I really don't see how the size
> of the charcoal would make that much difference. But, this year I've
> had problems with the charcoal not getting hot enough with lighter
> fluid. I didn't have this problem last year. When using lighter fluid,
> I use two different brands and sizes of charcoal. But I still never
> had this problem last year.

You got a lot of good advice in this thread. The bottom line is that
you have a bag of "shit" charcoal. I caught a bag of "shit" like that
a couple of months ago. It was called "Grill Time" or some such
no account name. It was not only hard to light, it didn't make heat
for shit either.

I use a chimney starter exclusively to start my smoker pit. I light
it with "Strike-A-Fire" sticks from the Diamond Match company.
They are a parafin impregnated pulp wood product with a match
striker on one end. They're easy, but not necessaryily better then
a few wads of paper. Of all, I liked the suggestion to simply fire
your starter up a second time with fresh paper to get it started.
And, don't buy that crap charcoal anymore or find a way to keep
it dry.
--
Brick(Save a tree, eat a Beaver)