Survival fire making: What fire ignition system should you carry?
In elk hunting, it’s always the idea of bagging one that sucks us hunters out in crappy weather into remote mountainous areas. The day was bitterly cold in Idaho’s Selway wilderness, the snow was knee deep and there were miles between us and the nearest road.
Being able to make a fire under adverse conditions can be critical to survival.
Back at camp, the first order of business was to start the fire. I took out my waterproof match container and tried to light a strike-anywhere match on the side. All the matches had been replaced a couple months ago, but not one of the 20 in the container would light. Then I tried my backup butane lighter. Because of the cold, it didn’t work either. Luckily, we had backup matches, and the fire was soon thawing us out.
“So suppose one of us had gotten hurt and couldn’t move – what would we do to start a fire?” I asked my partner. We both agreed it could have been fatal.
That frigid hunt was in 1993, and for years, I experimented to find a reliable firemaking method.
In 2002, as part of a project for Boy Scout Troop 18 in Bend, Oregon, Dr. Jim Grenfell and I set out to find the ultimate, practical fire ignition method that would work for the average person.
Criteria to be tested were: ease of operation, ability to use one-handed (in the event of an injury), reliability, widespread availability, durability, practicality and ease of carry. We ruled out any items that seemed to rely on expensive, gee-whiz technology.
Over the course of the next several months, we laboriously tested and re-tested conventional firemaking methods. When something showed promise after initial testing, we turned the Scouts loose on it. If the method survived the torture test, we’d ask average outdoors people to try and then comment on the materials.
Here’s what we found:
This firebow setup works well, but takes considerable skill to use. It would not be a good choice for survival firemaking for most people.
Fire bow or other primitive wood friction methods were not even in the running. In a survival situation, even if you have the time and skills to make and use a fire bow, you’d first have to find the materials to build it. If rubbing two sticks together to fire was easy, or even just moderately difficult, the native peoples would never have developed ways to carry a live coal between camps!
The people who depended on the friction method for twirling up a fire carried their own specialized sticks with them. Even in a forest, you might not be able to find dry, suitable materials to build your kit.
Matches: Best case scenario: You should be able to make one fire with every match, right? That points out a real problem with matches: there is a finate number of them, and when they’re gone you’re out of luck. And what if you use all your matches to make one fire because of a low skill level?
Every brand and type of match we tried was unreliable as a survival tool. But if forced to make a recommendation, I’d say the best match choice is the REI Stormproof matches. They work well under many adverse circumstances, but you can only carry a few (10, with striker strip) in a standard match case.
Always keep survival matches in a waterproof case, and rotate them regularly.
The advantage is that most people can strike a match, and you can get them anywhere.
The disadvantages are that matches deteriorate over time and fail, even if they’re waterproof. While coating the heads with paraffin or other sealants will work for awhile, that doesn’t make the matches dependable. Most regular book matches are useless if damp, or if they’re even exposed to moisture.
Another critical aspect is the abrasive strip on the match box or book. If it gets damp, wet or worn out, the matches won’t work. And one brand of match may not ignite on another’s abrasive strip!
Even strike-anywhere matches don’t necessarily light when struck on an abrasive surface. Try standing in knee-deep snow, during a snow and sleet storm and finding a dry, abrasive surface to strike a match on!
Butane lighter: I carry a butane lighter in my pants pocket, another in my jacket pocket and a third in my pack. If I need a fire quickly, I hope to flic a Bic and get the job done. A standard Bic lighter, according to my tests, will have about an hour’s worth of flame in it. But I don’t trust any butane lighter, and you shouldn’t either.
The Achilles heel is temperature. The boiling point of Butane is approximately -0.5 C at sea level, according to answers.com (This boiling point will drop with an increase in altitude given the reduced pressure). This means that as the lighter nears freezing, less gas will be vaporized inside of the lighter and will make it hard to light. And the higher in elevation you are, the less chance you have for ignition!
Butane lighters work great when they work!
My experiments show that placing a butane lighter in ice water (33 degrees) disables it almost instantaneously. If the lighter is removed from a one-minute ice water bath, and placed in a 70 degree area, several minutes will pass before it is warm enough to function. This time varies on the size, brand, and make of the lighter. If you warm the lighter in your already warm hand, it can take at least 90 seconds under ideal conditions, and probably closer to four minutes, to make it functional.
So, if you fall into an icy river, wade to shore and desperately need to make a warm-up fire, your butane lighter won’t work for what seems like an eternity. In a situation where your hands are freezing, you may not be able to warm the lighter quickly. Your cold, numb fingers may not be able to work the wheel, either. By the time the lighter is warm enough to fire, you may not be able to use it.
Any lighter’s durability is suspect. All it takes is one grain of sand in the wrong place and the machinery is disabled.
And don’t forget this little tidbit: if you inadvertently drop your butane lighter into a campfire, an explosion will follow!
A magnesium block, with flint stick attached on top, can be a reliable firemaking method.
Magnesium block:
A favorite of the survival shows, the magnesium block with a flint stick on top, has some merit. The idea is to shave off pieces of magnesium into a small pile, then ignite it with a spark from the flint stick. The magnesium block is waterproof.
The problem in the system is that it takes a long time to scrape enough shavings off the block to ignite, and it’s really easy to scatter the pile if you bump it or the wind comes up.
A magnesium block is OK, but not your best choice.
Zippo-style lighters: For a while, this appeared to be the winner. I filled my Zippo with lighter fluid to the saturation point, then sat down to see how many fires it would make before it failed. Over the next two days, (I suppose this is some comment on my social life), the total number of lights was 974! When full of fluid, the Zippo worked immediately after a one-minute ice water bath. It came out the freezer overnight and fired on the second try. I sealed the hinge and opening with a piece of duct tape, and left it alone for a month, and it still fired.
The fuel supply of a Zippo-style lighter tends to dry out quickly, making it non-functional.
But the Zippo-style lighter was wildly inconsistent in other areas. A fully saturated lighter dried out completely in three days in the desert. Having it sealed didn’t matter. And sometimes, for reasons I couldn’t figure out, the Zippo just wouldn’t light.
While you can fuel a Zippo with gasoline if need be, the system is too unreliable to recommend.
Flint sticks: I carry a flint stick on my key ring survival gear and have several in different parts of my gear. When used in combination with cotton balls saturated with petroleum jelly, the system is nearly foolproof. Put the cotton balls in a plastic case or ziplock bag.
But it takes some effort to learn how to use it, and like anything, there is no substitute for practice. Using a flint stick with only one hand can be done, but not as easily as using a butane lighter.
At the end of all this research, Grenfell and I concluded that there is no ultimate firemaking tool, and you should never rely on just one type.
So here’s the best recommendation: take at least three different methods. Environment factors that might disable one method should not affect all of them. So, include a fire tool out of each of these categories:
Flint stick, cotton balls and petroleum jelly: If forced to pick just one method of firemaking, this would be
Cotton balls, petroleum jelly and a flint stick are effective firemaking tools.
it. With practice, the combination is quick and reliable. But without a lot of practice and experimenting, you probably won’t be able to use it with one hand. If you’re disabled or unconscious, an untrained person might not be able to figure out how it works. (How well does it work? Read this unsolicited testimonial that was sent to survival expert Peter Kummerfeldt!)
Butane lighter: If you’re lucky and can keep your lighter warm and dry, a butane lighter make take care of all your firemaking needs. I’ve noticed many kids can’t operate a butane lighter without practice, so some training may need to be done with your juvenile outdoor partners.
REI Stormproof matches: Most folks don’t need instruction on how to light a match, so that’s why it’s a good idea to include matches. Invest in premium matches that may work when you need them, and rotate your stock regularly. Be sure to take along the abrasive strip from the match box, and store all matches in a waterproof container!
No matter which firemaking methods you use, take along charcloth and firestarter in a waterproof plastic bag! If your Zippo or butane lighter leaks or runs out of fuel, you can use the wheel and flint to make a spark that can be caught on a piece of charcloth. Also, any other ignition methods that involve sparks can be used with charcloth.
Firestarter should be compact, durable and easy to carry. It can make the difference between dying of hypothermia or getting a fire going with damp tinder and kindling!
One last suggestion: Include a road flare in your survival gear. It is a fantastic signaling tool, burns for at least 15 minutes and will ignite virtually anything!
Hand held Flares are cheap and easy to light. They also can used for emergency light, signaling and as a tourch weapon.
You can’t beat a basic bic lighter. Many people still carry them (for obvious reasons) and you don’t look out of place having one. I’m sure it even helps to break the ice with the ladies… assuming you’re still single, of course.
I like Zippos too. If your Zippo runs out of fuel (a common scenario in the desert) and you have charcloth in your survival kit, stick a piece in the chimney and you can catch a spark.
A Zippo is seriously windproof thanks to the windproof chimney design and generous fuel feeding method. Its flame can endure harsh weather conditions like wind, light rain and low temperature. Professional outdoor men use their Zippos to determine wind direction and to signal.
Once lit, a Zippo stays lit until you extinguish the flame by flipping the lid close. A Zippo uses a wick to feed the flame, so you don’t have to press the gas pressure lever as in the case of lighting a butane lighter. A Zippo can stand on its own and stay lit continuously — just like a koresene wick lamp — if need be.
A Zippo can last MUCH longer being lit than the disposable regular butane lighter without the risk of overheating and/or exploding. A Zippo’s flame is twice or triple as stronger than that of a butane lighter. Being stronger and longer-lasting, Zippo’s flame can be very useful for a number of outdoor tasks such as burning firewood/charcoal without prime tinder, warming up your cold hands, working as a wind-resistant lantern/oil lamp, signalling in poor visibility conditions, etc.
A Zippo doesn’t work like a mini bomb as a disposable butane lighter possibly might (by being accidentally left exposed to strong sunlight / heat sources, dropped from a certain height, thrown against the wall or crushed over). Overheating isn’t a problem to a Zippo. It’s safe to let your Zippo stay lit until its fuel runs out and its flame die out. No Zippos ever explode.
Even if your Zippo appears to have run out of fuel, in an emergency when to build a fire is a must, you can manage to get one going by taking out one piece of cotton ball from inside the insert case and put it into the chimney next to the wick. It’s most likely that cotton balls, being shielded inside the fuel chamber all the time, still retain some fuel vapor which can make it tindery enough to catch the flint sparks and burn.
Sounds like a good idea! Thanks for the feedback!
Try Bag-Balm instead of Petrolium Jelly on your cotton balls in addition to firestarting you can use them to clean and seal wounds, help chapped lips, treat sun / fire burns ect… Being petrolium jelly based it still works great as a fire starter and turns them into a multi-use item
IT SEEMS TO ME THAT ALL OF US THAT PRACTICE PREPAREDNESS KNOW ENOUGH TO START A FIRE BEFOR WE GET TO COLD OR OUR FINGERS GET SO COLD THEY WILL NOT WORK. IF NOT THE GEENE POOL GETS A LITTLE STRONGER.
THE REAL QUESTION IS NOT HOW TO START A FIRE BUT WHEN DO YOU START A FIRE. ONCE YOU KNOW AND UNDERSTAND WHY THEN HOW YOU MAKE THE FIRE IS THE NEXT STEP. ANYBODY HAVE ANY COMMENTS OR IDEAS ?
If you have ammo… You can remove projectiles and use wadding with the powder and primer as your ignition source. Fuse is a good starter… Cannon fuse is waterproof. Jeweler’s lenses have multiple uses. Trioxane tabs from surplus stores, if still available, light easily and burn for a while. Tea candles are cheap and hold a flame for a few hours. Good fire starters.
Try Amazon.com. Go to the front page of SurvivalCommonSense.com, click on any of the Amazon ads, then, when you get the item listing up, type in “potassium permanganate” in the search field.
Good luck!
I have looked everywhere for potassium permanganate. where do you find it?
That’s a good thing to look for, along with other forms of indigenous tinder. Thanks for the tip!
Saw the post, about dryer lint, so this follows. Birds nest gathered in the late summer or fall make a very combustible source. I keep a small zip-loc filled with the gatherings of the small creatures, after they’ve finished with their nests.
I like the sparking tool, especially when it’s combined with charcloth. The charcloth needs to be close to the tool to catch the spark, though. I also generally have a candle of some sort with me, if for nothing else, for lighting to save my headlamp batteries. The joke candles are also good choices. Sounds like you’ve given some thought to your firemaking needs! Good job!
How about the sparking tool that welders use for lighting a gas torch (& an extra tin of recently bought flints) ? It can be used one handed & easy to use if your hands aren’t working properly from the cold. And I also keep in my pack–a couple of candles. Ikea sells large batches of the small T-light candles. And what about the small & thin prank birthday candles that don’t blow out (wind-proof).
Your blog is so informative … keep up the good work!!!!
Have a primary, backup and contingency… rule of 3s.
For me:
Primary = lighter
Backup = matches (I like the REI ones)
Contingency = ferrocium rod + magnesium
It also never hurts to be able to make abo fire by friction… hand drill, bow drill, fire plow – these are equally dependent on materials, conditions, and technique.
Learn to make fire like your life depends on it – once you’ve mastered the basics, do so in the dark, then do it in wet weather (foggy, drizzly), then learn to do it in the rain.
We also tend to make fires too big.
Fire needs temperature, oxygen, and fuel. You can’t light a match to a 4″ log and expect it to blaze away…
With fire starters, you must nurture the spark or ember and transfer it into a well oxygenated tinder bundle to let it build strength and heat… then transfer it to your kindling and finally, feed your fire with larger fuel.
There are a lot of survival blogs, but not a lot of new material being written. Thanks for noticing!
Good suggestion and it does work!
I also tried smearing some Vaseline on a stick, and it also caught the shavings nicely. But the problem is that this adds another step to the firemaking process that, in some situations, might be hard to handle. With cold, numb fingers (like in our worst-case, cold river scenario), it could be very difficult to perform small motor skill tasks such as opening the tube and twisting the bottom device. And, Chapstick gets really hard when frozen, so it might not be sticky enough to smear and catch the shavings.
Given enough time I can probably find something wrong with every firemaking method there is! So carry several different kinds!
Thanks for the input!
For the Magnesium block and with problems of the magnesium shavings blowing away just smear some chap stick down and the magnesium filings wont fly away.
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I checked out the lighters’ website. The igniter would solve the flint issue of ignition, but you still have to have a power source (a battery?) for the electronic aspect. Since that particular lighter is fueled by butane, it will have the same issues with cold and altitude any other butane lighter would. The battery will also be compromised by cold.
The best igniter in the world won’t produce a flame if its battery energy level is low because of the cold, and the fuel is too cold to vaporize into gas.
This might be a nice addition to your survival gear, as long as you carry two other, different sources!
And whatever you take, don’t forget the charcloth and firestarter – when the butane is too cold to vaporize, you may be able to catch a spark off the disabled lighter on charcloth!
What about electronic (piezo?) ignition lighters? Wouldn’t that solve the flint problem?
Example: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1320
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Each set of 10, a week with three spares, vac packed for durability and inside one quart freezer Zip-Lock bags for field found creature nesting or other fire nursing fuels including hair. firE-paks should weigh ~4 oz each, so even kids can carry one+ always when afield.
Q-Tips: soak one end in unscented petroleum jelly and the other in candle wax
(Used since wood sticks were used.)
Popsicle/corndog sticks also lubed: feathered with sharp edge. (Used when sharp knives were allowed.)
Vac-packed cotton balls, lubed and dry (field expedient fuel mops) with 000 &/or 0000 steel wool, teach kids with steel w000l &/or w0000l.
Sanitize then pack clean in protective little bags with small alcohol wipes butane lighters to then warm in mouth in cold weather.
Even a small dry lump of coal from Christmas’ past is useful.
I haven’t tried vaccum packing matches or lighters. But even if that did preserve the matches’ integrity, you still have only a finite number of them. I don’t know if vaccum packing a lighter would help preserve it. It should. The seal could keep the lighter dry, and protect it from sand, dirt, etc. If you try it, let me know how you come out! Thanks for commenting!
Great article! Have you tested whether vacuum packing lighters or matches extends their usefulness in damp or wet environments? We have used cotton balls with vaseline to start fires in our wood stove for years, it’s a mess to make, but works great. Thanks again.
Good point! Did the lighters still have butane in them? I’ve wondered how long the reservoir would stay filled if the lighter wasn’t used.
This gets a hesitant…”Yeah, but…” endorsement from me. Dryer lint is reasonably flammable, depending on what was in the dryer. I called the local fire department to check on number of fires related to dryer vents igniting, and that didn’t turn out to be a major cause for concern.
Dryer lint works as a firestarter under these circumstances: 1) It must be dry 2) If you dry a load of 100 percent cotton, you’ll get lint that ignites like a cotton ball. If you dry (as I frequently do) a combination of polypropylene, wool and fleece in a load, you may get lint that doesn’t ignite. I have seen such lint fail to catch a spark at all.
There are any number of combinations of lint and old candle wax, lint and Vaseline etc. and they all work OK. But they aren’t the best, and that’s what I want in my survival kit.
The only advantage to lint, in my opinion, is that it is free. Cotton balls, where I live, cost about a penny a piece. I’ll take cotton balls, with a proven track record, over dryer lint any day. It just isn’t worth saving a few pennies.
You are staking your life on your firemaking method. If you decide to include dryer lint, (Which I don’t recommend!) make sure to test it before you need it to make a survival fire!
We did try steel wool and the 9-volt battery. It works fine, but wasn’t included with survival ignition sources for several reasons: 1) Batteries are fickle. The colder it gets, the less power they put out. 2) A battery-operated firemaking system is dangerous, in the same way a battery-powered digital compass, or GPS is dangerous: when the battery goes, so does the whole system. There is no backup aspect. 3) Finite number of lights: Either the battery will wear out or lose its charge, or you will run out of steel wool. 4) You have to carry a lot of steel wool to get lots of fires. It isn’t a long-term technique. 4) Steel wool flares up nicely, but only gives a few seconds of flame for the ignition.
Steel wool and a battery are a fun way to start a fire, but for survival firemaking, where you must have a system that functions under any circumstances, steel wool and a battery didn’t make the cut.