The Four Principles by which fire is created:
Chemicals, Electricity, the Sun, Friction (or combination thereof)
Christopher Nyerges
[Nyerges is the author of “Guide to Making Fire Without Matches,” and about two dozen other books. He’s the director of the School of Self-Reliance, and can be reached at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com]
LET’S BEGIN WITH THE SUN (More on the other methods later)
The sun is your friend and if you can focus the sun’s rays to a point, you can make a fire.
For making a fire, you are either focusing the light through a lens, as with a magnifying glass, or, you are focusing the light out and away from the reflector, as with a parabolic dish.
Let’s look at each of these.
Shining Light through a Lens
MAGNIFYING GLASS
Perhaps the easiest method for making a fire with the sun is to have a little magnifying glass in your pack or purse. The key to creating a fire with one of these is to have ideal tinder, and to then coax your little embers into a flame. Hold your magnifying glass steady, and perpendicular to the rays of the sun, so that you get a fine point of light. Hold that fine point of light on the tinder and you should start to see smoke within seconds. As the tiny ember grows, you can blow on it, but gently. As the ember gets bigger, you can blow even harder, and eventually your tinder will burst into flame.
FRESNEL LENS
The Fresnel lens (pronounced “freh-nel”) is typically made of plastic, and can be a powerful way to get a fire with the sun. It can be about 8 by 10 inches (or larger), or it can be the size of a credit card which fits into your wallet. The bigger it is, the better, because it captures and focuses more light. In classrooms of the past, every overhead projector had a Fresnel lens on its top flat surface.
This lens consists of concentric rings etched into the plastic, so that it actually functions like a parabolic dish. They are used to make simple Boy Scout solar cookers, for etching in wood with the sun, and for camera obscuras. They make excellent fire starters.
Small Fresnel lenses are readily available at stationery stores, and larger ones are often available at discount stores. Buy all you can find, as these make excellent gifts to friends and family.
To be safe, wear sun glasses when you try this method because the focal point of light is very bright.
PIGGY’S SPECS
Do you remember The Lord of the Flies? The plane crashes, all the adults die, and all these young boys go wild and develop two diverse camps. It’s a good story with lots of current social commentary.
The boys on the island made fire with Piggy’s specs—his reading glasses. You can make a fire with most reading glasses, whether plastic or glass, because they are simply magnifiers.
Not all prescription glasses can be used to make a fire, however. Depending on the eye condition that the glasses were made to correct, they may or may not be able to sufficiently focus the sun’s rays to a point. You just have to try it and see if they work.
The key is to use good tinder, and hold the glasses steady as you find the focal point. Make sure the glasses are perpendicular to the sun so that the light shines directly through the lens. You’ll see right away whether or not this will work. If it works, on a sunny day you’ll get a fine point of light and your tinder will start smoking pretty quick.
CAMERA LENS
Back in the ancient days of 35mm cameras, you could screw off the lens and use it as a magnifier to make a fire. Even if the lens did not come off, you could usually open the back of the camera, where you put in the film, and let the light shine through the camera and through the lens to make your fire.
Though you’re not likely to have one of those old cameras anymore, there are still detachable lenses built for digital cameras, and these are still useful as fire starters.
USING ICE
Inuit people created fire with a huge sheet of ice, about four feet in diameter, and carefully scraped to make a lens. Success with this method requires a clear piece of ice, which you can then carefully scrape to create enough of a lens which will focus light onto your tinder. The user would stand the piece of ice vertically, with the flat surface facing the sun, so that the sun’s rays would ignite the dry tinder.
Good to know, but I’ve never done it successfully and there is a simpler way to make fire using water…
WATER IN A PLASTIC BOTTLE
Get a clear plastic water container and put just a little water in the bottom. You then hold it up to the sun, and you need to tilt it just-so, so the sun shines through the water like a lens. If you can get a good focal point, hold some tinder at the focal point and if everything is just-so, meaning the sky is clear and the water container is clear and not opaque, then you can get a little ember within minutes.
Primitive fire teacher Gary Gonzales of Palmdale, California has demonstrated this tactic, and has produced an ember in under two minutes. Success for this method requires a clear plastic container, preferably without ridges in the plastic, and the great patience of Gary.
Focusing the Light back away from the Lens
THE ALUMINUM CAN
You can actually make a fire using the bottom of an aluminum beer or soda can, if all the conditions are right. The very bottom of most aluminum cans (beer or cola) is not a true parabolic dish; however, when highly polished, it can be used to focus the sun’s rays to a point and ignite tinder.
Since aluminum cans are discarded everywhere, this is valuable information. The fact that we can make a fire from the aluminum can makes this piece of “trash” extremely valuable.
POLISHING THE BOTTOM
You need to give the bottom of the can a high polish in order for it to sufficiently focus the sun’s rays. This is easiest done with some fine steel wool. You will need to polish the bottom for about fifteen to twenty minutes, until you have an obviously-bright and highly reflective surface. How do you know you are done? You test it, and see how well you can make a fire.
DOING IT
Point the bottom of the can towards the sun, and then move your tinder into the bottom area, watching for the place where the light focusses to a point. When you find that point, keep your tinder there until you get your coal. This is akin to making a fire with a magnifying glass, except you are not focusing the light through the lens, but back up to a single point.
You may see that there is not a single fine point of light, such as you get with a magnifying glass. Rather, it is a smallish area where the light is focused. You will want to keep your can and tinder stabilized in one point for this to work. You’ll find that it’s best to put the can on the ground and carefully hold it in one place, with the bottom aimed at the sun.
Fire researcher Eric Zammit found that he could fairly easily ignite rolled mugwort leaves using this method, as long as the bottom of the can was highly polished, and as long as it was close to midday when the sun was directly overhead. He could not ignite paper, though he was able to ignite leaves. Zammit had the best results by holding the can in his hands, and propping his elbows on his knees. Then he aligned the can with the sun by watching the can’s shadow until the shadow corresponded with the diameter of the can.
“By holding the can at eye level, I could look under the mugwort to find the focal point of the light, and to put it right on the tip of the mugwort,” says Zammit.
USING A SOLAR COOKER TO MAKE A FIRE
We’ve cooked some excellent meals with the OneSource solar cooker, which is a parabolic dish cooker which focuses sunlight to a broad point. It can also double as a fire starter. This is not something you’d carry in your pack or pocket, since it’s about four feet across, but you might have one in your backyard or in your car. This is a serious solar cooker, based around the parabolic dish which focuses the sunlight to an area that does the cooking. This is the cooker to have in your backyard for emergency cooking, or when the kitchen is too hot in the summer.
The focal point of this cooker gets very hot— at least 400 degrees Fahrenheit. We have found that a piece of paper held in the focal point will burn within twenty seconds!
A PARABOLIC DISH FIRE STARTER IN YOUR CAR
Your headlamp reflector is a parabolic dish, or at least, is reflective enough to make a fire. Your first job is to remove your headlamp. Depending on the make and model of your car, this can be as easy as removing four screws, or it could be a bit more complicated.
Once you’ve removed the headlamp, pull it free from the electrical connection. Next, carefully break the glass. Yes, this means that you won’t be putting that headlamp back onto the car, and so think carefully before you do this with the car you’re driving. Also, since this requires the sun, do not ruin your headlamp if the sky is overcast.
Once you break away the glass and clean the edges, you’ll see that the inside is a more or less parabolic reflector. On some vehicles, this reflector is round (such as on most Jeeps), and on some cars it’s somewhat rectangular.
Face the reflector at the sun, and stick your finger about an inch or so away from the middle of the reflector. You should quickly find the “hot spot.” Now get some of that ideal tinder you’ve been collecting and hold it steady in that hot spot.
Depending on the configuration of the reflector, and on any obstructions to the sun (clouds, haze, trees), you could get a quick ember and flame in less than a minute, or it might take considerably longer. But if everything is just right, this is a remarkably effective way to get a fire going. If you want to know if your headlamp reflector would actually work to make a fire in an emergency, I suggest you go to an auto supply store and buy a headlamp for your car. Then just test it and you’ll know.
We don’t recommend this method unless you have absolutely no other way to get that fire going
NOTE: The above is NOT a comprehensive listing of all the ways in which you can create a fire from the light of the sun..