If you read my earlier post about the 4100 lumen torch flashlight you will get a kick out of this one as well.

I had a little bit of an issue with sleeping last night and my head was reeling into all sorts of different things.  One of those things had to do with starting a fire using my mini mag light.  My thoughts during the sleepless portion of the night had me holding a magnifying glass up and concentrating the flashlights light onto my char cloth and getting it glowing.  In my dream it worked perfectly and so would be very useful to start a fire after the sun went down.

This morning I gathered up my char cloth and my flashlight, went to the fireplace and gave it a go.  I was able to get the light concentrated just like you do using the suns light, but even after 3 or 4 minutes of that light being concentrated it did NOT get the char cloth to glow…sorry about that.

So I went on line and searched “starting a fire using your flashlight”….here is what I got.

There are basically 3 different ways you can use your flashlight to start an emergency fire.

Two of the ways utilizes the batteries and “0000” steel wool to get the fire going.  One of these ways forces you to have on hand two small gauge wires. And the third way makes you use some char cloth from your flint and steel fire starting kit.

Battery way number one:

The video I copied the link to and will post up here shows the man using one of the large square type batteries to accomplish the task.  By using some deductive reasoning you should be able to see that any battery with say 9 or more volts would do the same.  I will leave it up to you to try a “AA” or “AAA” size battery, they probably would work just as well but would take a bit more time to figure out how to do it.

So, in essence what happens is you are using the “0000” steel wool to short circuit the battery.  Any time you take a single small gauge wire and touch both the positive and negative ends of the battery, the current traveling through the wire will cause it to get very hot where the two polarities meet (usually the middle part of the wire)…that is exactly how a flashlight or light bulb works.  Current is coming through a single wire, positive on one side and negative from the other.  The center of the wire glows and gives off the light you see.  Flashlight bulbs and light bulbs in your house have the wire encased in an oxygen free vacuum so the wire can not actually burn, it just glows.

If you have something really hot and glowing and you introduce oxygen and some combustible substance, fire will be the end result.

So, by using the steel wool and touching it to the two ends of a battery, the steel wool gets so hot it bursts into flames because it is a really fine and fluffy type of steel and there is a whole lot of oxygen surrounding it.  Be careful when handling this.  You will see in the video, he has placed the steel wool into his tinder nest before touching the battery to the steel wool.

If you are trying this with a smaller battery, make sure you have a way to get the battery away from the burning steel wool quickly as a fire could cause it to explode and then your emergency situation will instantly become a worse affair.  I take NO responsibility for your actions.

Number two way to use your flashlight to start a fire:

Take the top off your flashlight, the cone shaped shiny part with the plastic or glass lens cover.  If your flashlight bulb stays inside the cone shaped part, you will have to remove the bulb.  Please be careful not to break the bulb as you will still be able to use the flashlight once you have a fire.  Take a piece of your char cloth from your fire starting kit and roll it tightly in a long shape, the end of the char cloth is going to be placed up inside the cone where you just removed the bulb.

Now face the lens portion toward the sun and you should soon see the char cloth smoking.  The sun rays will focus down onto the char cloth just like using a magnifying glass to accomplish the same thing.

Of course now you know to put the glowing char cloth into a nest of tinder and begin blowing until it bursts into flames and then add small twigs etc. to build your fire up.  See video on these two methods:

Number three way of using your flashlight to start a fire.

This again requires the use of “0000” steel wool, and it also involves the other two small gauge wires.

A flashlight like a mini-mag light is best for this.  Take the top off the mini-mag flashlight and pull the little bulb out.  Set them both aside as you will want to re-assemble your flashlight for use as a flashlight later on.

The bulb comes out and you will see two small holes in the end of the flashlight.  Stick the ends of the two wires, one into each of the two holes and make sure you do not allow them to touch each other.

Now you touch the two wires to the steel wool nest and suddenly you will have flame and be able to build your fire up.  The two wires make the connection of the battery’s positive and negative poles and shorts it out against the steel wool causing it to get hot and burst into flames.  The following link shows you this method:

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Now in my search I did find a fourth example of using your flashlight to start a fire, but in this way you will cause your flashlight to be useless for anything else but perhaps a “one time” fire start.

This method will only work with a larger bulb type flashlight as the mini-mag lights and LED flashlights will not work.

Be very careful with this one:  Break or remove the glass or plastic lens out of the  end of your flashlight.  Break the glass bulb without breaking the wire inside (not an easy thing to do).  Place extremely dry and fine tinder in the cone and around the fragile wire of the bulb, be careful you only have one try with this method.  If you are able to do this without breaking the wire I commend you highly.  Now turn the flashlight switch to “on”.  The wire inside the bulb will get very hot and glow and hopefully start your tinder on fire.  When it does, tip the flashlight down and dump the ignited tinder into another larger pile of tinder and begin your fire build up.

With God on your side, the wire that is exposed from your bulb will still be in tact for another attempt later on should you need it.  If it breaks you had best keep the fire you just started going and hope rescue comes soon.

Again, I take no responsibility for what happens to you while you are using these methods to start an emergency fire.  I place it on here as information only and hope that if you are ever stuck in a place and need to build a fire and all you have is a flashlight that you will be able to start a fire and get warm, cook some food and eventually be rescued.

Bears Butt

Dec. 17, 2012