Cold Fire. How to Make Fire Without Matches and Lighters Safe Fire for Performances

Everyone should know how to kindle a fire - with such knowledge you will not be lost. A real dude definitely knows how to start a fire without matches. This is a necessary skill for survival. It is impossible to guess when you need to build a fire, and there will be no matches at hand. Maybe your plane will crash in some wild area, like somewhere in Alaska. Or, for example, you go into the forest and lose your backpack in a fight with a bear. Eventually, you may end up in very windy or wet conditions where matches are practically useless. It doesn't matter if you ever need these skills, but it's still very cool to know how to make fire, no matter what conditions you are in.

Making fire by friction
Making fire by friction is not for the faint of heart. Perhaps this is the most difficult of the "non-match" methods of making fire. There are different ways to make fire by friction, but the most important thing in this matter is what kind of wood to use as a plank and rod.
The rod is a stick that needs to be twisted back and forth around its axis in order to create strong friction between it and the plank to produce a spark. If you create a strong enough friction between the rod and the plank, you can get embers and use them to start a fire. Poplar, juniper, aspen, willow, cedar, cypress and walnut are best suited for making fire in this way.
An important point: the wood must be dry.

hand drill
The hand drill method is the most primitive, simple and at the same time the most difficult. All that is needed for that method is a tree, strong hands and iron patience. Applying this method, you will feel like a real primitive man. So, we make fire with a hand drill:
Gather the tinder into a compact pile that resembles a bird's nest. The nest of tinder will be used to ignite the flame obtained from the spark that we have to extract. Such a "nest" should be made of material that catches fire easily, such as dry grass, leaves or bark.
Make a small indentation in the "nest". Cut a v-shaped hole in the fire board and make a small indentation next to it.
Place the bark under this depression. Smoldering coals arising from the friction of the rod against the board will fall on it - this will give the fire a chance to flare up.
Start rotating the rod. Place the rod in the recess on the plank. The length of the rod must be at least 60 cm for everything to work properly. Press the rod against the plank and rotate it between your palms, moving them quickly up and down the rod. Keep doing this until embers form in the hole of the fire board.
Fan the fire! As soon as you see the red coals, knock on the fire board so that they fall on a piece of bark located under the hole. Move the bark to your "nest" of tinder. Carefully and carefully blow on the coals to start the flame.

fire plow
Prepare the board for the fire. Cut a hole in the board where you will put the rod.
Three! Take a rod and place its end in the recess on the fire board. Start rubbing the tip of the rod against the walls of the recess in the plank, moving it up and down.
Start lighting a fire. Position the "nest" of tinder so that smoldering embers, which will arise from friction, fall into it. As soon as you catch an ember, gently blow on it - and get a small tongue of living flame.

bow drill
The use of a bow for making fire is probably the most effective of the friction methods, because it is easier to maintain a high pressure and speed of rotation of the rod. There is a strong friction necessary for making fire. In addition to the rod and plank, this method will require a weighting agent to hold the rod, and a bow.
Make a weight device. It is used to press on the end of the rod that is on top: the rod is set in motion with the help of a bow and because of this becomes unstable. To hold the rod, you can use a stone or a piece of wood. If you use a piece of wood, it must be harder than the rod. It is very good to use water or oil as a lubricant to make things go better.
Make a bow. It should be the same length as your arm. Use a flexible, slightly twisted wooden vine. The string of a bow can be made from anything, such as cord, rope, or a strip of rawhide of rough tanning. One condition: it must be a durable material that will not tear. Stretch the string and you're ready to start making fire.
Prepare the board for the fire. Cut out a v-shaped hole, place tinder under the hole.
Wrap the rod with a bowstring. Place the rod in the bowstring loop. One end of the rod should be in the hole that you made in the plank, and the other end should be pressed with a stone or piece of wood.
Start moving the bow. Move the bow back and forth in a horizontal plane, just like when sawing something. As a matter of fact, now you have assembled an elementary mechanical system. The rod must rotate quickly. Keep moving the bow until you get coals.
Set the fire on fire. Throw the embers into the tinder and lightly blow on them. Ready! Now you've lit the fire.

Flint and steel

This is the old method. Having a good flint and steel with you is always a good idea. Matches can get wet and they're useless, but then you can still rely on your flint and steel.
If these things were not at hand, no one forbids you to improvise using quartzite and the steel blade of a pocket knife.
You will also need a fire starter, usually cloth or moss. They catch a spark well and smolder for a long time without flaring up. If you do not have special material for ignition, then a piece of mushroom or birch bark is quite suitable.
Fix the ignition material and stone. Grab the stone with your thumb and forefinger. Make sure that the distance from the fingers to the edge of the stone is approximately 5-7 cm. The ignition material should be between the thumb and the flint.
Bay! Take a steel bar or use a knife handle. Hit steel on flint several times. Sparks will fly off the steel and land on the ignition material, causing smoldering.
Kindle the fire. Place the fire starter material in the tinder "nest" and lightly blow on it to fan the flame.

Making fire with a lens

Lighting a fire is easy with a lens. Anyone who melted plastic soldiers with a magnifying glass as a child knows how to do it. If you have never done such things, then here is the instruction for you.

Traditional lenses
All that is required to produce fire is a lens, which is necessary to concentrate sunlight on a certain place. A magnifying glass, glasses or binocular lenses are fine. If you add a little water to the surface of the lens, you can enhance the beam.
Rotate the lens at an angle to the sun to focus the beam on as small an area as possible. Place a "nest" of tinder to this spot, and a fire will soon flare up.
The only downside to this method is that it only works when there is sun. Therefore, if it happens in the evening or on a cloudy day, the lens will be useless.

In addition to the simple method of making fire with a lens, there are three additional methods of making fire with a lens that also allow you to make fire.

Balloons and condoms
By filling a balloon or a condom with water, you can turn these simple things into a lens that will help start a fire.
Fill a condom or balloon with water and tie off the end. Give the ball or condom the most spherical shape. Do not inflate the condom or balloon too much, as this will distort the focus of the sun's beam. Squeeze the balloon into a shape that will focus the beam. Try to squeeze the condom down the middle to form two smaller lenses.
Condoms and balloons have a shorter focal length than ordinary lenses, so they should be placed 2-5 cm away from the tinder.

Making fire with ice
Ice and fire is not only a quote from Pushkin, which you probably remember from a school literature course. With the help of a piece of ice, you can actually make a fire. All you need to do to do this is to shape a piece of ice into a lens and then use it for its intended purpose, like any other lens. This method is especially good for hikers in the winter.
Get clean water. In order for ice to be made into a lens, it must be transparent. If the ice is cloudy or contains any impurities, then, no matter how hard you fight, you will not get fire with it. The best way to get a clear piece of ice is to fill a bowl or cup with clear water from a lake, pond, or melted snow and let the water freeze. A piece of ice should be about 5 cm thick to serve as a good lens.
Shape a piece of ice into a lens shape with a knife. Remember that the lens is thicker in the middle and narrower near the edges.
After you get a rough lens, polish it with your hands. The heat from your hands will melt the ice enough to create a nice smooth surface.
Start making fire. Set the ice lens at an angle to the sun in the same way as if it were a normal glass lens. Concentrate a beam of light on a pile of tinder and see how useful it is to remember Alexander Sergeevich's quote.

Coca-Cola can and chocolate bar
I saw this way in a YouTube video, quite an interesting thing. All we need is a can of Coca-Cola, a bar of chocolate and a sunny day.
Open the bar of chocolate and start rubbing the chocolate itself against the bottom of the jar. Such polishing will make the surface of the tin bottom shining like a mirror. If you don't have chocolate with you, toothpaste works the same way.
Get fire. After polishing, you essentially got a parabolic mirror. Sunlight will bounce off the bottom of the jar and focus on one spot. This is somewhat reminiscent of the principle of operation of mirrors in a telescope.
Turn the polished bottom of the jar towards the sun. This way you will create a perfectly focused beam of light aimed directly at the tinder. Place the tinder at a distance of approximately 2-3 cm from the focus of sunlight. After a few seconds, a flame should appear.
While I can’t imagine that I ended up somewhere at the end of the world with a can of Coke and a chocolate bar, but this method of making fire really works.

Batteries and natural wool

As with chocolate and a bottle, it's hard to imagine a situation in which you can find yourself in extreme conditions without matches, but with batteries and a piece of clean wool. But you never know how life will turn out. This method is quite simple and fun, so you can try it at home.
Stretch a piece of wool. It is necessary that the strip of wool be approximately 15 cm long and 1 cm wide.
Rub the battery with a piece of wool. Hold the strip of wool in one hand and the battery in the other. Any battery will do, but the optimal power is 9 watts. Rub the side of the battery with the "contacts" with wool. The wool will ignite. Lightly blow on it.
Transfer the burning wool to the tinder. Wool will not burn for long, so hurry up!

Few of the children, and adults too, did not dream of holding a flaming fireball in their palms and feeling like they were their favorite fantasy heroes! Unfortunately, the flame can seriously burn your hands, so for a colorful focus, you need not an ordinary, but a cold fire.

It would seem difficult to find a more paradoxical phrase. However, it really exists, moreover, it can be easily made at home. A few minutes of work, and you will be able, to the envy of your guests, to demonstrate the flaming ball lying on your hands.

For this trick you need to prepare:

• A piece of cotton fabric;
• needle and thread;
• shallow saucer or tin lid;
• combustible substance with which you are going to saturate the future fireball.

There are several ways to make a burning hand ball, and they vary in difficulty.

Important! Therefore, before making a cold fire, it is worth considering whether you have the skills of a chemist and the necessary equipment, or is it better to prefer a simpler, but equally effective way.

Cold fire: quick and easy

First, you need to make the base for the fireball. Take a cotton cloth and, folding it into a compact ball, wrap it with thread. It would be useful to flash the resulting ball for reliability.

As a combustible material, isopropanol or products containing it, such as hand sanitizers such as Lyzanol, are best suited. However, high-octane gasoline will demonstrate no less, if not more, effect. The temperature of these substances is relatively low, and the flames they create will not burn your hands.

Some spectacular tricks with fire can be shown with the help of improvised household tools and using quite simple methods. However, it should always be remembered that when working with flammable liquids, extreme caution and adult supervision is always required. You can impress your friends with tricks worthy of a real circus show, or even fool them into thinking you are the real master of fire. For more information, proceed to reading the first step of the article.

WARNING: Take special care. Working with flammable liquids without proper protective equipment is not recommended.

Steps

The use of a gas lighter

Take precautions. If you are going to perform this trick, you must take appropriate precautions so that you do not set fire to your house and get burned. To perform this trick, go outside, find an area of ​​​​free space without dense vegetation around and other combustible objects. In case you need to quickly put out the fire, you should have a bucket of water on hand, and you should also invite an adult to look after you during the trick.

• If you are using gloves for protection, use old leather gloves or coated gardening gloves that will fit snugly around your hands and have a fairly firm surface in the palm area. While bulky heat-resistant gloves provide excellent protection against burns, the cloth glove trick usually fails and can even become more dangerous. Bulky, heat-resistant gloves often extinguish flames in the bud, while ordinary cloth gloves can absorb liquid gas, increasing the likelihood of the gloves themselves catching fire and causing burns.

1. Make a fist, leaving a gap between the little finger and the palm. Clench your fist, leaving enough space inside it to allow you to freely insert the end of the lighter. The fingers should be pressed relatively tightly so that the gas does not seep between them when you begin to fill your fist with it. The upper opening of the fist in the place where the index finger touches the palm should be clamped with the thumb.

   • Try to imagine that you are holding water in your fist and trying to keep it from spilling. The trick, in essence, is to fill the fist with gas and set it on fire at the moment the hand is opened.

2. Insert the end of the lighter into your fist. Insert the end of the lighter with the flint deep enough into your hand so that you can fill the cavity created by the fist with gas. It is not enough just to bring the lighter to the lower edge of the palm, you need to insert the lighter inside.

   Press and hold the gas button for 5 seconds. To start the trick, you should press the gas button. Do not strike a spark by turning the wheel of the armchair, but simply press the button.

   • Different performers of this trick hold the button longer or shorter, depending on the intensity of the gas supply of the lighter, as well as on the size of the fireball you want to create. For extreme caution, it is best to stick to a time of five seconds, this is quite enough to accumulate the required amount of gas, giving a relatively brief flash of a fireball.
   • Once you get used to working with the lighter during the trick, you can try to create a larger fireball by holding the gas button down for ten seconds or a little longer if you wish. However, you should start small. This trick is dangerous, do not try to jump above your own head.

3. Take the lighter away from the fist and light the flame. After the countdown of five seconds, you need to act quickly so that the gas does not have time to dissipate. Move the lighter about 30 centimeters away from the fist, and then light it, giving a spark and turning the gas supply back on.

   • On no account strike a spark while the lighter is in your fist filled with gas. This is extremely dangerous.

4. Bring the flame to the hole in the fist near the little finger and open your palm. Quickly bring the lit lighter to your fist, at the same time opening your palm and moving all fingers one by one, starting with the little finger. Act fast. The gas will ignite and burn quickly. From the outside, it will look as if you can "control" the flame, spawning fireballs with your palm.

   • To achieve coherence of their actions will require some practice. You need to take your fingers "fan" away from the lighter, opening the little finger first, then the ring finger, and so on. If you open all your fingers at once, the gas may not ignite, and if you do not open your fist, you can burn yourself. Under no circumstances should the fist be left clenched.

   Applying flammable hand sanitizer

   1. Be especially careful. This method describes a very common party trick that is popular on YouTube, but should only be used with extreme caution and only performed under adult supervision. If you don't act quickly and safely, it's easy to hurt yourself.

   2. Purchase a flammable hand sanitizer. This kind of trick involves setting fire to a small amount of disinfectant and quickly interacting with the fire, followed by immediate extinguishing. To do the trick, you'll need to find the right alcohol-based disinfectant: look for "ethyl" or "isopropyl" alcohol.

      • It is very likely that some disinfectant liquids will contain many ingredients, others only one or two, however, the presence of one of the two alcohols above will make it flammable, depending on the presence of other components. Nowadays, there are more and more alcohol-free hand sanitizers that won't do the trick. Be sure to read the composition of the product on the label, otherwise the trick may not work.

   3. Take proper precautions. The idea of ​​the trick is to spread a small amount of disinfectant in a thin layer over the surface and set it on fire, followed by very quickly run your finger over the burning surface and extinguish it immediately. It is very important to use gloves for this trick, and you also need to have a bucket of water on hand to put out the fire if necessary.

      • Find the right heat resistant surface to work on. To perform this trick, you should position yourself outside, preferably on a concrete surface away from any flammable objects. The more level the ground, the better. Clear the area of ​​all combustible objects: branches, sod, paper. You need to make sure that nothing but the disinfectant will catch fire.

   4. Spread a thin layer of alcohol-based disinfectant over concrete and light. Squeeze out a small amount of disinfectant and spread it evenly over the concrete with your fingers. Wipe the disinfectant off your fingers so they don't catch fire prematurely. While the alcohol has not evaporated, take a lighter and set fire to the oiled surface. It should light up with a barely noticeable bluish flame.

      • It is better to perform the trick at night so that the glow of the flame is more noticeable. However, the lighting should be sufficient so that you can understand exactly what you are doing. You can try to perform the trick in the evening, when there is moderate natural light, and the flames are already quite noticeable.
      • Under no circumstances you can not lubricate your hands with a disinfectant and set fire to it on your hands. The trick works because of the speed with which you perform it, not because the disinfectant burns safely. Such actions will be extremely dangerous, you will get severe burns. Do not do that.

   5. Run one finger quickly over the burning layer of disinfectant. If you do this quickly, you can pick up some of the burning disinfectant with your finger, giving a fleeting impression of burning fingers. After doing this action, you won't have much time to enjoy the spectacle, as you will get burned if you let your fingers burn for more than 1-2 seconds.

      • You should feel hot, or a strange combination of hot and cold. Hand sanitizer usually creates a cooling sensation that can be confused with heat. In any case, you will not have enough time to really feel something. You just run your finger over the surface, look at it for a second and extinguish the flame.