Let me first explain how this question came about: my dear Doper friend @The_Butterfly_s_Ghost and I are both smokers, they only occasionally while I have been addicted for decades. We both have and love our Zippo lighters, and they are also a mega-fan of the TV series “Our Flag Means Death” which is set in the classic Caribbean period of piracy, ca. 1720. The other day, we had a WhatsApp chat, and they posed the question “What if I was miraculously transferred to a pirate ship in the Caribbean while carrying my Zippo lighter? Could I keep it functioning in the long run?” (you know how Doper minds work… )
I immediately thought that this was an interesting question, and it its two-fold: were all materials needed available at the time, and if yes, present on a ship at sea or purchasable in a typical port?
Here are my thoughts. What we need:
Cotton: definitely available at the time, and probably also on a sea ship
A wick: just the same.
A flintstone: the material was of course there, you only had to find someone to work it into the size and form compatible with a Zippo. I’m quite sure a clockmaker or a goldsmith of the time could have done this, maybe even a craftsman on a ship.
Fuel (naphta): here I’m not so sure and quite ignorant. I know that naphta is won from mineral oil, but I don’t know by which process (refining?) and if this was already known back then, or if naphta even appears in nature without processing. And would it have been found on a 18th century ship? And if not, were there alternative fuels?
A side question that follows from these speculations: were there already lighters at that time that worked in principle like a modern Zippo lighter?
Lamps back then were commonly fueled by whale oil, or vegetable oils in some cases. Also high-proof alcohol was available. I would guess that with a bit of trial and error, a suitable replacement for a mineral oil-based fuel could be made to work in a Zippo.
I’m skeptical if whale or vegetable oil are volatile enough to be able to be lighted by the spark of a flintstone, and maybe pure alcohol is too volatile to work. But you’re right, maybe a combination/concoction of those could work.
Thing is, really old-timey naval artillery (pre-gunlocks) were using things like slow matches, not Zippos. They were holding that thing off at the end of a long stick, not walking right up next to the cannon and setting off the touchhole with some kind of proto-Zippo.
As for naptha, it has been used since ancient times, so it is not like it would have been impossible to get. Here is a “17th–18th century” bottle of " “NAPHTA Ol.” https://www.si.edu/object/naphta-oi:nmah_993914 aka Zippo fuel
And Google AI closed the lid on my idea and totally extinguished it:
No, a mixture of vegetable oil and high-proof alcohol is not a suitable or effective fuel for a Zippo-style lighter
. Vegetable oil is too viscous to wick properly and will clog the mechanism, while alcohol burns too fast, inefficiently, and often creates an invisible flame. Using it will likely damage the wick and packing materials.
Why This Mixture Fails:
Vegetable Oil: It does not vaporize well. It will leave a sticky residue, clog the wick, and cause the lighter to produce excessive smoke, a dirty flame, or fail to light entirely.
High-Proof Alcohol: Alcohol evaporates too quickly, leading to extremely short burn times. Furthermore, alcohol burns with a nearly invisible, pale blue flame in daylight, creating a safety hazard.
The Combination: The oil will foul the wick, while the alcohol will likely evaporate before it can pull the oil up, leaving you with a broken, greasy lighter.
Better Alternatives:
If you lack proper Zippo fluid, the best alternatives are:
Naphtha (or petroleum-based camp fuel/white gas).
Ronsonol lighter fluid.
91% Isopropyl Alcohol (This works in a pinch, but it evaporates fast and burns quickly).
Note: Using non-standard fuels can ruin your lighter’s wadding and wick, requiring you to rebuild it.
Yeah I don’t think oil processing tech was sophisticated enough to get fuel that flammable?
Also I don’t think 18th century manufacturing would be able to make something that small and reliable. If the could then flintlocks would look like zippo lighter mechanisms that not the way they did
The flint in your Zippo isn’t natural flint, it’s ferrocereum - an alloy formulated for making lots of sparks. You could replace it with ordinary flint but it wouldn’t be nearly so good at lighting the wick.
I didn’t know that, and that’s a bummer. I wonder if it would work with a natural flint at all, maybe by increasing the pressure? (you can do that with a Zippo by the screw that holds the flint)
One notable difference is that with flint-and-steel, the flint is striking sparks off the steel. (I.e., burning microparticles of steel.) Which is hard work, and generally doesn’t generate a lot of sparks.
Whereas ferrocerium is the material that’s giving off sparks, very generously, when lightly abraded by edged or rough metal.
I did some internet digging, which was… lean on confirming cites, but given a large grain of salt, it seems likely that various alchemists and pro-scientists in the Persian and Chinese territories were using various (cruder, granted) distillation methods to make limited quantities of oils suitable for lamps at a minimum. Given the wide variety of naptha (different consistency and fractional percentages) available at various locations, and the number of independent experimenters, I’m with @DPRK - you could probably find something given the presumed access to many a port during the Pirate Adventure, though it might take some experimentation that ruins the lighter before success. And of course, @griffin1977 is 100% correct that a period flintstone would likely have had subpar and possibly unuseable results, especially if the distillate was sub-optimal.
You can get flint to spark on its own if it has enough iron content - the flints on the south coast of England for example (I’ve made them spark by just banging them together), but they are weak little things compared to ferrocerium
I’m glad that you mentioned that, because I remembered that as kids in Germany, we used to hit certain rocks together to produce sparks. We even tried to light fires that way, but of course we never succeeded. I was afraid I was misremembering and losing my marbles.
So if regular flint doesn’t work with the existing wheel in the Zippo (it might), a sufficiently skilled blacksmith could fabricate a replacement out of wrought iron and that probably would spark in conjunction with natural flint
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