Every fire kit should have at least one method for making an open flame.
Last week we looked at packing a real-world survival fire kit, MASTERING FIRE FOR SURVIVAL, this week we will start to look at using some of those items, and others, from our preparedness gear. Learning how to light a fire is a helpful skill for many situations. Fires are important for warmth, cooking, and providing light. Understanding how to use natural materials for fire-making is just as valuable as knowing how to use a lighter. Our Ethnobotany 101 course teaches you how to identify plants that can be used for tinder, kindling, and fire maintenance in the wild. When you are able to start a fire easily, you will feel more confident in your ability to handle outdoor tasks. The goal of this blog is to help you learn how to use a lighter to start a fire, even if the lighter is broken or empty. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of lighters and matches, you will be able to confidently light a fire in any situation.
Lighters are often used to start fires because they are easy to carry and use. However, like all tools, they have both strengths and weaknesses. Understanding these will help you use them more effectively.
Now that we know the weaknesses of lighters, let us look at how to deal with them if they happen.
If your lighter breaks, you can still make fire using alternative techniques. In our Survival Skills and Backcountry Hiking Adventure, you'll practice fire-starting in real outdoor conditions, using whatever materials are available.
If your lighter breaks, there are a few ways to make it work again:
Use the Flint: Before we go any further here, it is common to call the spark-making part of a lighter a flint. The companies even sell packs of lighter replacement flints. The truth is that flint is actually a rock, which does not spark. This is a common mistake that comes from the old method of making a fire often called flint and steel. With flint and steel the flint, or many other rocks, is actually used to knock off a tiny spark from a pyrophoric metal. Pyrophoric metals will create a tiny short lived fire, which we call a spark. In modern times, scientists figured out how to add other pyrophoric metals to make the sparks more abundant, easier to get, and significantly hotter. These new metals are often called ferro rods, and it is actually a tiny little ferro rod that creates the spark of a lighter. A lighter has a scraping wheel that rubs up against the tiny little ferro rod and creates a shower of hot sparks. These hot sparks then in turn light the flammable gas on fire.
Should our lighter be damaged, or empty, we can still use this “flint” to make a fire. The basic idea is to remove the tiny ferro rod and use it to create sparks. Removing the tiny ferro rod is one effective method. But it is also extremely easy to lose the rice grain-sized tool. We prefer to teach a few different methods at The Survival University Five day Intermediate class. Here are two of my favorite, easy-to-use, and reliable methods.
The lighter has three parts that we need to worry about breaking, the small fuel storage area, the striking wheel, and the ferro rod itself. There are many ways to deal with malfunctions in all three areas, but the most common break comes in the fuel tank.
So let us pretend the fuel tank is somehow broken, we can look at other details in class and in future videos and blogs.
The lighter is not functioning as normal, so we need to create a reliable way to turn sparks to flame. A great way to practice this is to use an empty lighter or to break one. Be careful breaking the lighter. For classes, I put brand new lighters, one at a time, into an old sock and break the fuel tank with a hammer. Be extremely careful if you choose to replicate this. A lighter is under pressure and it can shoot off, explode, or otherwise hurt you. The best practice at home would be to just use an empty lighter.
As with many fires, great attention must be spent on setting up our tinder and kindling. Take the time to finely process some materials, getting them ready to take a short-lived flame.
Slowly, and steadily, roll the striking wheel. We do not want to make any sparks at this point. Hold the lighter on its side as you do this, see picture, so that a small pile of pyrophoric metal powder will collect in the metal collar. You can do this with your finger, or roll it on the bottom of a shoe. I like to find, or make, a flat area on a branch or stump to roll the lighter about 40 times.
Holding the lighter at this angle and slowly rolling the scraping wheel allows a great deal of the pyrophoric metal dust to be collected.
Tipping the lighter up allows us to dump this “fire dust” into a pile so that it will catch a tiny spark and flare up.
Once we have collected the dust, we have a decision to make. A sudden strike on the wheel at this time will give us a quick burst of sparks and flame. If we have fine, dry, tinder this is enough to light. Things like a cotton ball, jute twine, finely processed cedar or cottonwood bark, cotton tail fluff, etc will all transfer this flame rather nicely.
Strike the lighter as normal. The sparks will ignite the power you made and allow for a hot burst of flame to light your processed fuel.
The dust and highly processed material should be placed at the base of your fire lay. The sparks will transfer heat to the small fuel, which in turn will take the heat to the proper fire lay and light up first try.
At this point time becomes crucial. Your fire will indeed be short-lived if you do not take the time to process your fuel beforehand.
Our other option is for slightly more difficult tinder. For this method, we do the slow grinding step twice. The first time we pour a small pile of the powder into our tinder. Say a wadded-up bit of napkin. Then we repeat the slow grinding process and strike the second batch close to the first. The result is two bursts of flame that will light things like wadded-up paper, piles of pitch wood dust, and grass.
Homework: Use an empty or broken lighter to create a pile of powder in a wadded-up bit of toilet paper. Using the broken lighter strike this into flames and build a small fire from the flaming napkin.
With this method, we will rely on a proper fire kit as described in our last lesson.
You may recall a great deal of our space was made up of extremely easy-to-use and reliable Tinder. We also had that backup ferro rod, but for some reason let us assume using it is not an option.
I will use the fire boogers, a special way to set up cotton balls, and Vaseline, that we teach as an example. Whatever your chosen easy fuel is, fluff it up as well as possible.
Fluffing up the flash tinder creates the perfect environment for catching a spark on a tiny bit of fuel and transferring that heat into fire.
Use your pocket knife, or a stick to pop the collar off of the lighter. This will allow you to get your sparks as close as possible to your finely processed, fluffed-up, tinder.
Strike the wheel firmly.
Our flash tinder should take the spark into flames without any additional effort, once processed that is.
Homework: Using a broken or empty lighter, light one of your pre-packed fire starters from lighter sparks alone.
If your lighter runs out of fuel you can still use it. Any of the methods above will work with an empty lighter. I have heard reliable stories of how a lighter in a pocket or bag was pressed and eventually ran out of fuel. There are countless methods devised to prevent the lighter button from being pressed down at the wrong time. Personally I find these a bit silly. As someone who needs a bunch of empty lighters a year for teaching, I can say emptying a lighter by holding down the button is a real pain in the butt. It takes forever. Because of this, we prefer to teach a different method of prevention than some of the other common ways like putting a rubber band around the top of the lighter, under the button to prevent it being pressed down.
As I mentioned, it takes forever to empty one of these lighters. Because of this, we feel that a solid observation method is not only a better approach, but it drives home the point that you should be checking on your emergency gear a few times a year.
Pick a lighter that has a bright color, in case, dropped in a hard-to-find area, but that is see-through if you hold it up to the sun. This can be easier said than done nowadays. So here is what I like to do.
Look for the lighters with some type of pattern, not a solid color, and look really closely. Usually, these lighters get their pattern by having a sticker heat shrunk around them.
Carefully slide a knife or scissors down one side of the lighter pressing on the lighter. This will cut into the sticker.
Remove the sticker. You will now have a white lighter. Hold the white lighter up to the sun and you will be able to see the fuel level. Replace any lighters once they drop below the halfway point. White lighters will stand out if dropped in almost all environments. What's that you say? “Good luck finding a white lighter in the snow!” This is absolutely a concern.
To deal with this we pick a bright colored duct tape. Wrap the tape around the BOTTOM of the lighter. This will be below the halfway point, so if the fuel level drops down where you can not see it, replace the lighter. The bright tape gives you some emergency duct tape, adds a bright color, and has a pro tip to go with it.
Pro tip: If you find yourself on a windy day, broken lighter or not, it can be hard to collect piles of dust or tinder. Pull some of this duct tape off and loop it back on itself with the sticky side out. You can now pour gunpowder, ferro rod dust, magnesium shavings, pitch wood dust, or whatever onto the duct tape. The tape will hold the dust pile so your sparks or flame can get to it without the wind blowing it away. On top of that, duct tape is a flammable flame extender.
Homework: Prepare a white lighter with tape around the bottom.
A wet lighter can be a challenge, but not impossible to use. If you want hands-on training in real outdoor conditions, check out our Survival Training and Expedition Program (S.T.E.P.), where you’ll practice fire-starting techniques in unpredictable weather and challenging environments.
There are many ways a lighter could get wet, and the different ways affect how easily we can deal with this. A lighter dropped in a creek for a few seconds bounces back much quicker than a lighter that was completely submerged in your pocket while you swam to shore.
There are many ways to waterproof your lighter, both expensive and do it yourself. Our advice here is to pick a method that will not be too hard to get off if you find yourself with slippery or hypothermic fingers. Many of the methods work great at keeping a lighter dry but are useless in situations where you would need an emergency fire.
Another option is to Use a Waterproof Lighter: Some lighters are designed to work in wet conditions. If you expect to be in wet areas, consider getting a waterproof lighter. I have seen students use these and they seem to work well, but I honestly can not justify the expense since there are so many other ways to deal with a wet lighter.
If I do anything at all to prevent wetness, I simply cut the thumb off of a pair of surgical gloves and pull it over the top of the lighter. You can easily rip or bite this off in an emergency. But honestly, since we have a backup ferro rod, and drying out a lighter is not all that hard, I rarely do this anymore. I carry a ferro rod on my knife, matches in my pocket, and my emergency fire kit. Should I loose all of that but one lighter and for some reason the lighter was really, really wet, then I would again use the method mentioned in the broken lighter section above. The water does not keep the small ferro rod from behaving the way we want it to. The water is an issue with the fuel area being blocked.
Our main goal here is to dry the water and get all the water out of the “fuel line.” A great way to practice is to fill a cup with water and drop your lighter in. Practice this a few different ways. First, drop it in and take it out quickly as if dropped in a creek for a second or two. Once you get good that way, leave the lighter submerged for a few minutes before making your fire.
First, make sure your lighter works when it is dry. It may seem silly, but I know someone who tried for an hour to get a dry broken lighter to work thinking it was wet.
Make sure your lighter is fully submerged. Practice with different lengths of soaking.
Hold the lighter upside down and give it some strong full-arm shakes. We want a big ark so that centripetal force will drive the water out of the fuel area. Rotate this with some strong downward strikes on your palm. Our goal is to shake as much water out as possible.
About ten or twenty good full-arm shakes help clear out any water.
Rotate the swings with some hard upside-down taps.
Put your lips right on the metal collar and blow really hard. Then hold down the fuel button for a few seconds to clear out the fuel line of any water that seeped in.
Try to light the lighter at the end of each of these steps, if the first pass did not work do it again. It rarely takes longer than five minutes to get a wet lighter going again.
If this does not work after a few passes I would either use a backup method or the broken lighter method above. If you switch fire methods, store the lighter upside down in your pocket to further dry it out for future uses. I recommend a pants pocket for a few reasons. First, they are tight enough to keep the lighter mostly pointed down. Plus as you move the lighter will continue to be jiggled and shaken. Pants pockets also have warmth from movement and your body, this heat will help to dry it out. If your pants pockets are wet, store the lighter upside down anywhere that is warm and dry. Chances are it will work by the time you are done collecting your tinder, kindling, and fuel for a fire.
Homework: Submerge a lighter in water and practice using the drying techniques to use the same lighter to light a flame that lasts long enough to ignite a small fire.
Altitude can greatly affect many fire-making and cooking methods. High Altitude adventures require slightly different preparation long before we leave the house. In an effort to keep this blog from becoming a novel, I think we will address many of these in specific blogs. We do want to leave you with one method that works wonderfully if you find yourself with a tiny little flame from altitude or high air pressure. This method can also be helpful on damp days as it gets a normal flame more exposed to tinder.
The real problem here is we will get a tiny, cooler, flame or no flame at all. With no flame at all what do we do? That is right, switch to the broken lighter method or use our ferro rod. With a tiny flame, we need to alter our situation to get a fire.
Using your knife, or a stick, break off the metal collar. Now we can get our tiny flame more exposed to our tinder. If we prepared for altitude this will be a quick fix. Should we find ourselves in an altitude unexpected, it may take a bit of time for even this tiny flame to transfer.
With all fires, we should spend most of our time on the preparation. This becomes especially true with wet fuel and at high altitudes. The more time you spend processing your fuels, the quicker this tiny cool flame will transfer.
Wind can be a problem when using a lighter, or any open flame source, to light your fire. To prevent the wind from blowing out the flame, try the following:
Shield the Flame: Hold your hand or an object in front of the flame to block the wind. This can help protect the flame from being blown out.
Use a Windproof Lighter: Some lighters are made to work in windy conditions. They have a flame that is harder to blow out, which can be helpful when outside.
Process, process, process that tinder: Old Crooked Stick could always get a fire no matter what the situation. He used to always say, “Baby fire needs baby food.” If you are using a match-sized flame then your tinder had better be smaller than the match handle itself. When we process fuel, we are decreasing the volume and increasing the surface area. This makes our “baby food” much easier for our small open flame to transfer to. When in doubt, process your fuel just a little more. Not spending the time preparing their fuel is one of the number one reasons that adventurers do not get, or maintain, a fire in difficult situations.
Home Work: Process all your fire-making material and then take it outside on a truly windy day. Or better yet, use an extension cord to take a fan outside and create a windy environment to practice making fire it. You must not only be able to shield and light your fire in the wind but keep it going for at least 10 minutes without any help. We will talk about fire lays soon, remember a fire should work for you, you should not be enslaved to keepinh it alive.
Most of the time your lighter will work just fine. We still see students struggle with making a fire though. Please remember these tips:
Process, process, process! Mors Kochanski used to define kindling as something that catches fire on the count of 1,2,3,4,5. When you practice with your open flame sources count rapidly, not 1001,1002, but a quick five count. If the flame does not transfer, process a little more. You must be in the habit of preparing your fuel in such a way that your open flame transfers quickly.
Fire likes to climb: Get that open flame right into your fire lay, but make sure you start low. Students have a tendency to light fires from the top. Lighting the fire from the bottom allows us to use fires natural nature to build a fire. It also offers more protection to the baby fire in the wind and rain.
Break the safety feature off of your lighter right now. There are numerous reported cases where hypothermia and the loss of dexterity have prevented a student from being able to work a lighter with these on them. Simply put a screwdriver under the safety feature and pop it off. Be careful not to hit yourself, or anyone else, with the piece as it flies off. There can often be a sharp bent spot when you do this, take the time to bend those back down so you do not cut your thumb.
One of the first things you should do is get rid of these things that make it difficult to use your lighter.
Learning how to use a lighter and matches is an important skill. While lighters are quick, easy, and portable, they also have weaknesses such as breaking, running out of fuel, and not working in wet or windy conditions. By practicing how to deal with these weaknesses, you can feel confident that you will be able to start a fire in any situation. Remember to practice drills, use fire starters, and be prepared with other tools to help you light a fire even when your lighter is not working perfectly. If you do not already have one make sure to pack a true fire kit.
Want to take your fire-making skills beyond just lighters? In our 50-Day Wilderness Immersion Program, you'll gain in-depth experience with fire-building, from modern tools to primitive methods that work in any condition.
Keep practicing, keep learning. Stay safe out there, I cannot wait to see you on the adventure trail,
Hutch
A former Marine and lifelong Boy Scout, Hutch grew up immersed in outdoor skills, thanks in part to his grandfather, another outdoor instructor who used training with survival legends as rewards for achieving goals. Hutch is also the author of four books and brings a unique perspective to his teaching as someone who is autistic. His passion for survival skills and outdoor education shines through in every class he teaches.