Fire is a necessary component of survival, whether it be used for cooking, heating, or signaling. The ability to create one without matches is also useful.
Using flint and steel is one of the simplest match-free fire-starting techniques. Additionally, a curved lens can concentrate sunlight to a point where a fire can be started.
Nine of them are covered below, ranging from those that use scavenged urban items to those that only need the wilderness’ natural waste products.
How to Start a Fire Without a Lighter?
The Hand Drill
The oldest and most challenging technique is the hand drill. All you need is wood, persistent hands, and tenacious resolve. Here’s how it’s done:
Build a Tinder nest. Your tinder nest will be used to turn the ember you create into a flame. Any material that easily catches fire, like dry grass, leaves, and bark, should be used to make a tinder nest.
Make your notch. Create a small depression next to the v-shaped notch you cut into your fireboard.
Underneath the notch, place bark. The friction between the spindle and fireboard will produce an ember, which will be captured by the bark.
Start spinning. On your fireboard, insert the spindle into the depression. To make this work, your spindle should be about 2 feet long. Maintain pressure on the board and start rolling the spindle between your hands, running them quickly down the spindle. Do this repeatedly until an ember appears on the fireboard.
Start a fire! When you spot an ember that is glowing, tap the fireboard to drop the ember onto the piece of bark. To your tinder nest, add the bark. To ignite your flame, gently blow on it.
Read More: How to Start a Gas Fireplace
Fire Plough
Prepare your fireboard. The fireboard should be grooved. This will serve as your spindle’s track.
Rub! You should insert the spindle’s tip into the fireboard’s groove. Start scrubbing the groove with the spindle’s tip.
Start a fire. You should place your tinder nest at the end of the fireboard so that you can plow embers into it as you rub. Once you’ve caught one, start that fire and gently blow the nest.
Bow Drill
Because it’s simpler to maintain the speed and pressure required to generate enough friction to start a fire, the bow drill is probably the most effective friction-based technique to use. You’ll also require a socket and a bow in addition to the spindle and fireboard.
Get a socket. While rotating the spindle with the bow, pressure is applied to the other end of the spindle using the socket. The socket may be made of stone or a different kind of wood. If you use another piece of wood, try to find a harder piece than what you’re using for the spindle. Oil and sap in wood help to lubricate the joint between the spindle and the socket.
Make your bow. The bow should be about as long as your arm. Use a flexible, slightly curved piece of wood. Any object, including a shoelace, rope, rawhide strip, etc., can be used as the bow’s string. Find something that won’t break, please. Your bow is now ready for use after being strung.
Fireboard preparation. In the fireboard, make a v-shaped notch and a depression next to it. Place your tinder beneath the notch.
The spindle with thread. Catch the spindle in the bow string’s loop. Put one spindle end in the fireboard and use your socket to exert pressure on the other end.
Start sawing. Start sawing back and forth with your bow. You’ve essentially built a crude mechanical drill. Spindle rotation ought to be rapid. Keep sawing until you create an ember.
Make your fire. Gently blow on the ember as you place it in the tinder nest. You’ve lit a fire for yourself.
Flint and Steel
This has long been a standard. Bringing a quality flint and steel set along for a camping trip is always a good idea. Matches can get wet and be become pretty much useless, but you can still get a spark from putting steel to a good piece of flint.
You can always improvise if you find yourself without a flint and steel set by using quartzite and your pocketknife’s steel blade (you are carrying your pocketknife, aren’t you?). You’ll also need char cloth. An example of char cloth is charcoal-produced cloth. It catches a spark and keeps it smoldering without bursting into flames. A piece of birch or fungus will do in the absence of char cloth.
Take hold of the char cloth and rock. Between your thumb and forefinger, grasp the rock. A border should protrude by two to three inches. Grab the char with your thumb resting on the flint.
Strike! Use the back of your knife blade or the back of the steel striker. Strike the steel several times against the flint. The glow on the char cloth is caused by sparks from the steel that fly off and land there.
Start a fire. Fold up your char cloth into a tinder nest and gently blow on it to start a flame.
Traditional Lenses
All you need to start a fire is a lens to concentrate sunlight on a particular area. Eyeglasses, binoculars, and magnifying glasses can all be used. The beam can be made stronger by putting some water in the lens. Angle the lens towards the sun in order to focus the beam into as small an area as possible. Put your tinder nest under this spot and you’ll soon have yourself a fire.
The lens-based approach’s one limitation is that it only functions when there is sunlight. You therefore won’t succeed if it is dark outside or cloudy.
There are three unusual but successful lens-based fire-starting techniques in addition to the conventional lens method.
Start a Fire from Water
This may be the most ironic ignition method of all because water usually extinguishes fire. When the right bottle is used as a lens to focus sunlight, it is possible to start a fire with a water bottle. In fact, liquid-filled bottles can concentrate the sun’s rays to the point where they start some roadside brushfires.
To use a water bottle as an ignition method, you’ll need a clear, smooth plastic or glass bottle full of clear water. You’ll also need dark-colored or charred tinder (burned cotton balls, char cloth, singed cattail fluff, or dark fibrous bark). Finally, you’ll need a lot of patience and strong sunlight.
Glass bottles (clear beer and cream soda bottles are best) have given me the best results. These bottles were full of crystal clear water and used when strong sunlight was at a lower angle. The morning and afternoon sun shine through the bottle’s rounded shoulder, creating a focal point of light that acts like a magnifying lens, when the bottle is placed on its side with the cap or cork in place to hold the water.
In this beam of light, add some dark, premium tinder (char cloth or tinder fungus powder like chaga) and wait. If the bottle can be arranged in the right position to the sun, the tinder will begin to smolder. Once ignition has occurred, place the burning fuel into a nest of fibrous tinder and blow it into a flame.
Parabolic Mirror
Did you know that the Olympic torch was lit with a very special curved mirror in ancient Greece? Its curvature produced a natural focal point of light that ignited the torch, and it had a somewhat satellite dish-like appearance.
Even in the modern day, we can still concentrate a concentrated spot of amplified sunlight using a curved mirror, like the reflecting cup from an old flashlight. The large shield-like mirror from ancient times is somewhat different from this.
On the parabolic mirror cup in a flashlight, the focal point is inside the cup, not outside of the curvature. Even though the flashlight bulb is gone, you will still see a blindingly bright point of light. To make this work, dismantle the light and remove the bulb from the reflecting cup.
Put a tiny bit of dark tinder where the lightbulb was. Adjust the mirror in and out of the cup (from behind) so that it is perpendicular to the light source. Your tinder will start to smolder once you’ve got the zenith and azimuth on the cup just right. Take it out right away, put it in a bigger tinder bundle, and ignite it with a match.
Potassium Permanganate
In a survival situation, I wouldn’t want to rely solely on this technique to start a fire, but it’s an intriguing backup and a good opportunity for a science experiment. Several U.S. military used to issue a little bottle of potassium permanganate crystals in first-aid kits. This can still be used in the manner intended—to be sprinkled on cuts as a disinfectant. It also disinfects water.
Just enough to make the water pink, then let it stand for an hour before drinking. This versatile chemical can also make a fire, when used with certain materials. Glycerin and potassium permanganate mixed together is the most trustworthy mixture. The drug store will have glycerin, which is frequently used as a laxative and to soften the skin.
Even though potassium permanganate is more difficult to find, it is still used in household water softening systems. Pour a small pile of potassium permanganate where you want the fire to burn to start a fire with it. In the center of the stack, make a small indent, and then add a tiny amount of glycerin. Then just wait for it to produce a flame. Add your tinder quickly and build a fire.
As a backup method (if you’re out of glycerin), you can also make fire with these dark-colored crystals and ordinary table sugar. Just mix a little bit of each on a dry piece of bark and combine with a blunt stick. When your grinding starts to make a fire, place some tinder right next to the crystals and push it over there. Even though this approach is less trustworthy, it is a choice.
Chlorine and Brake Fluid
For this to work, you generally need highly-concentrated chlorine, for example, chlorine pool tablets. A sizable fireball is produced when brake fluid and chlorine are combined. This is explosive, so you should never do it indoors.
The Magnifying Glass in Your Compass
The majority of us rarely travel with a magnifying glass, especially in the great outdoors. Your compass, though, might have a magnifying glass on it. On sunny days, you can use this to start a fire.
As simple as they make it look in movies, almost. Simply direct the light toward some tinder and maintain very good hand control. The tinder will ignite in a matter of minutes.
Final Words
Do any of these techniques appeal to you? Any other ways of making a fire without matches or a lighter that I missed? Comment and let us know!
FAQs
How Do You Start a Fire With Sticks Without a Lighter?
Start with a large, loose handful of tinder placed directly in the center. Arrange sticks of kindling around the tinder. When you get a spark or smoke from your tinder, add kindling to it until it catches fire, then fuel to get the campfire roaring.
What Are 3 Things to Start a Fire?
Oxygen, heat, and fuel are frequently referred to as the “fire triangle.” Add in the fourth element, the chemical reaction, and you actually have a fire “tetrahedron.” Remember that if you take away any one of these four items, there won’t be a fire or it will be put out.
How Do You Start a Fire Naturally?
Look for cedar or birch trees if you find yourself without any kindling or if what you do have is wet. To make some quick tinder, the bark of these trees can be shredded. As a natural tinder source, cattails are also useful.