Sharing fire with neighbors turns up in several artistic works, including La Boheme and Layla and Majnun, I believe. I can’t think of others right now, but I know there’s an Indian love story that involves it.
Iron pyrite will spark when struck with a natural flint. In an archeological site they found a 20,000 year old pyrite stone that had a deep groove worn in it from being repeatedly struck.
In a high wind it’s actually easier to start a fire from a coal or spark than a flame. Matches blow out but a spark in a sufficient quantity of dry finely divided tinder will fan into a fire in moments.
Neophyte here. Flint-this, flint-that…
Doesn’t your culture have to have access first to flint? Or is it everywhere, even in bogs and swamps?
Fine, thanks to a brother in Boy Sprouts, and being stuck in the female program, I can friction start a fire using a shoe lace, 2 sticks, a sort of flat piece of wood, some leaf litter in combination with pine needles, or dried moss and a flat stone with a slight hollow to it. It is called a fire bow. A pocket knife makes it easier, but I took a lovely course in flint knapping, so I could rummage around for something rocklike to make the needed cuts.
I applaud the woman who at least researched friction firemaking in Survivor a number of years ago … it would have been much better if she had taken a few hours and practiced, and practiced in inclement weather.
Hmmmm, I’m gonna have to try that sometime.
Yes, I always completely coated the sticks. This meant dipping the matches twice, and letting them dry between dips. I’m pretty sure that I used either paraffin or candle wax when I tried coating the matches in wax. I do remember that the matches were a big mess.
I could usually get a fire started with just one match…but I was always VERY careful to use a lot of fluffy tinder, then some slightly thicker tinder, then some kindling, then the logs. The other girls would usually try to get the fire started QUICKLY, and not allow the kindling to get going good. So, even though my attempts took longer than their individual attempts, I’d only need one attempt, while they’d need half a dozen. If the wood was at all damp, the leader would tell me to start the fire and tend to it, because she was tired and hungry and she didn’t want to eat at 9 PM.
Nowadays, I usually just use one of those candle lighters, the butane thingies with lighter fluid, for most of my firelighting needs. I no longer worry about survival that much. I’m diabetic, I have other health problems, if I’m lost long enough to need to build a fire, chances are I’m dead already.
Supposed to be “spill” I think.
Spunk actually.
Do a search on Youtube for “Spunk or Sulfur Match.” The guy has a rather nice primitive fire making kit as well as provides instructions on making your own sulfur match.
Since this topic as drifted somewhat let me bring up my absolute favorite fire by friction method, that being the simple fire piston. It’s my favorite since when demonstrating it, the piston returns the biggest “wow” response. Search for the term to see one in operation.
Very polished metals dude. Chopana bracelets from Peru for the Inti Raymi festival. Lenses or reflective mirrors that’s what they were for. Portable lighters, sunlight.
Now if we are talking about newer methods… I have a water-resistant (don’t say water-proof, nothing is) container about the size of a pack of cigarettes that has a lanyard (rope) that I wear around my neck when I got into the woods hunting or fishing far off the beaten trail.
It is filled with strike-anywhere matches that were coated with molten wax, then the container was filled to the top with more wax. I live in a fairly wet environment and am an out-doors guy. Even if I fell into a stream, as long as that lanyard stays with me, I will be able to start a fire and stay alive, I hope.
I also have a supply of pitchy wood that I have found in old stumps and logs that I keep for camping. It is like supper kindling and will light even a wet campfire, but I don’t pack that around unless I am going on a planned camp out.
But the lanyard full of wax-coated matches is around my neck most times that I am in the forest alone.
The very next step I take could be a broken leg and a cold death in the woods alone, without it.
You’re sure about this are you?
It’s a synonym for “splinter”, the small thin pieces of wood typical of when wood is smashed or broken. Originally used to refer to the dangerous fragments generated when wooden ships took cannon fire, the term is used in a modern context as “spalling”- when explosive shock causes fragments to break off the inner surface of armor plating, to the extreme discomfort of tank crews.
It is most places. And where it isn’t, its the first key trade item. I have made the argument (at the coinage of the Americas gatherings) that flint actually served as the first money and continued like that into “modern” times. Screw shells and beads, when you are looking for a basic common denominator in a stone age culture, look at the stone. And its going to almost always be flint.
Yes, because flint is an ideal material for making pointy rocks. Pointy rocks were a major technological advantage over the pointy stick. I’m sure that the sparks produced when making a pointy rock accidently sent some dried vegetation smouldering one day, and from there emerged the next scientific advance.
I am very interested to know how poorer communities in the world make fire these days. Some parts of India and Africa for example who maybe don’t have the means or opportunity to buy disposable lighters and matches?
I personally always have a cheap flint and steel with me with home made char cloth in a waterproof tin so I know how to make fire easily without matches or lighters.
I am also sure everyone else around the world has their own method - any ideas? I am writing a book about this subject - so any help appreciated… Tallus
Is your “flint” artificial ferrocerium, or are you using actual steel and stone? I’ve gotten char cloth to catch easily with artificial flint (which sparks much hotter) but never with sparks struck off steel. I think I must be doing something wrong.
P.S. considering that even the poorest people in the world wear eighth-generation markdown clothing made in the West, maybe matches are actually cheap enough for even the most impoverished, especially if locally manufactured.
Yeah, and keep in mind true “tribal”/Hunter Gatherer lifestyle is now very rare. Papua New Guinea, parts of South America (and even then only because the governments have resolved to try and not interfere with the native HGs), maybe rare parts of Africa. Even extremely poor countries in Africa there’s intermittent access to some forms of electricity, generators aren’t super uncommon, although many families cannot afford to run them very often. They have wide access to things like cell phones, manufactured clothing etc. They have access to both matches and lighters. They also have access to battery powered electronics as well.
That being said, with low rates of electrification in terms of the grid, a lot of sub-Saharan Africa people of lower income outside the big cities may not stay up as late at night, may get up with the sun and go to bed with it etc. Without cheap lighting it’s not necessarily a wise financial decision to stay up into the late hours of the night.
Cooking is often done in a charcoal stove, which can also provide heat for the home. Matches are frequently used to light them, and usually newspaper or even plastic bags are used to get the charcoal going quickly. You can use a match a day and that’s pretty affordable even for sub-Saharan Africa. The typical sub-Saharan African is probably not familiar with ancient HG methods of making fire, to be honest.
Africa and Australia, yes, but there are no H/Gs in South America or New Guinea any more. There are pastoralists who still hunt and gather, but they all cultivate crops of some sort.
Matches are cheap and pretty much universally available. We’re on a planet where most of the world is less than a mile away from a bottle of Coke. Very few places are going to be out of reach of a match. Maybe some remote villages get cut off from supply chains by seasonal floods and the like, but even then I’d guess most people stock up.
Candles and lamp fuel are expensive, though, and people may forgo that, especially when the moon is out. Wood or charcoal for cooking is also expensive and is often a huge chunk of a family’s household income-- particularly in denser areas that have become deforested. But there isn’t a lot you can do about that.
Coated matches are fine, and handy in an emergency kit, but you will only have a finite number of them. Some kind of spark generator will start a great many fires before it wears out.
My mother used to run an English country pub. At some point in the Autumn she would light the two fires in the bar and they would stay lit until Spring. First thing was they only burned the right wood no pine for sure. Fruit tree wood was favourite. Second was that throwing waste onto the fire was strongly discouraged and every evening, when I was there, I had to pick over the ashes to remove the crap that ignorant idiots threw in.
Once clean, the fire would be ‘banked’. The ashes were left in the grate and a medium sized log would be left smouldering. The draught was reduced to the minimum. In the morning, a vigourous poking and the addition of some smaller sticks, would soon have a merry blaze going.
A couple of things to note:
Someone asked about various methods of lighting fire. Among them are the fire piston, the fire bow, the hand drill, the fire plow, the fire thong, the fire saw, flint-and-steel and flint and pyrite. The fire piston is basically a stick with a little hole in the end into which you put a little bit of cotton, or the fibers of the fishtail palm (the tool is native to Southeast Asia). The stick is inserted into the end of a closed tube and smacked home. It acts like the piston in a Diesel engine, getting hot enough to ignite the tinder. Indeed, this may have been where Rudolf Diesel got the idea. The fire bow involves using a bow to spin a spindle against a fire board. See any episode of Survivorman. The hand drill is like the fire bow without the bow. The fire plough involves rubbing a stick into a groove in a piece of wood. This method looks like it sucks. It was the method used by Tom Hanks in Castaway (“I have made fire!”). The fire saw involves rubbing a channel of bamboo filled with fine bamboo tinder against the edge of another piece of bamboo. See Rescue Dawn for a demo. The fire thong involves rubbing a piece of wood with a thong. See youtube for examples. Flint and steel dates back to Roman times. I made one out of an old file and also can strike sparks from the back of my Mora knife. Flint and pyrite predates that and was, I believe, the method used in wheellock guns.
Charred cloth was mentioned several times, but was not likely found in anyone’s tinderbox in the 18th century, cloth being an expensive commodity. Charred punk wood was much more common.
I personally carry a couple of lighters, a Clipper which has a removable striker, and a weather proof torch lighter. I have had problems with both of these in cold weather. However, when I go camping, I carry cotton balls smeared with vaseline. This can be lit with the striker from the Clipper and will light even marginal tinders. I also keep a small Altoids tin for use as a tinderbox and some rubber inner tube.
Spill planes were special kind of plane designed to make spills, a coiled sliver of wood great for lighting your pipe or whatever. Lots of these would be kept in a spill vase near the fireplace. See Paul Sellers on youtube for a demo.
FWIW,
Rob