When you see torches in movies such as Cecil B. DeMille’s epics or TV shows such as Game of Thrones- the kind of torches that hang on castle walls and don’t have a wick and oil reservoir but just some kind of pitch or rags around a stick type deals- they seem to keep their flame going for a really long time. What would they most likely be coated with?
My first guess would be olive oil, but I guess it depends on what location you are living in.
We used a combination of chainsaw bar oil (thick, gooey) and kerosene beck when I would occasionally make torches.
They’re coated with special effects.
That is, just because a torch burns for hours in a movie doesn’t mean that can happen in real life.
–Mark
Touch pitch is made out of pitch, a.k.a. sap … like what drips from pine trees.
I don’t know what they do in the movies but wax makes a better torch than liquid fuels will. Paraffin would work, waxes formulated for candles may be better. Liquid fuels will burn out rapidly, and probably sputter a lot. If you were using a liquid then mineral oil used in lamps might work well.
How do you moderate the fuel consumption? Regardless of pitch or paraffin, it appears that torches have some sort of fabric infused with fuel that is wrapped around a stick. With that much wick, what prevents it from completely burning out in 10 minutes?
That’s exactly what I was wondering.
Nothing. Movies are lying to you. Torches flat out don’t work like they do in movies.
And in the movies, the torches are often found in tombs or secret chambers that have been hidden for hundreds or thousands of years. (See the movie National Treasure for one example.) I would think the stick would have fallen apart in that time, or the fabric decayed and fallen off the stick.
The fabric is acting like a wick in a candle. The burn is occurring on the surface of that material where it is exposed to the air. It has a much larger surface area than a candle wick, and that’s why it will burn out pretty rapidly no matter what you use, but more slowly with wax than liquids.
In film, I’d venture to guess that they use an alcohol of some form, and this website seems to suggest the same:
For a movie, the key factors would be:
- Doesn’t let off a lot of smoke.
- Doesn’t burn the actors.
For those purposes, alcohol is probably your best bet. Probably, they just re-wrap and re-light each torch between each take.
Though, if the torch is just a sconce on the wall in a heavily-used set, they might have piping to feed propane or something equally common to them, rather than having to replace and relight all of the torches each take.
I would have thought that Mythbusters would have done a segment on movie torches at some point, but I can’t find it in a Google search.
Real-life torches were made with local materials, so there were lots of different kinds of construction. Remember that some basic chemistry goes back a very long time. “Greek fire” for instance is thought to have contained quicklime (calcium oxide) because the chemical was well-known even in antiquity. Hydration is strongly exothermic and impregnating flammable materials with quicklime will allow them to burn even when wet. In fact, getting it wet would make something treated with quicklime catch fire.
Sulfur and phosphorous were also known in antiquity and there is some evidence that they were used in torch making. Some torches used by the Roman legions were supposed to be able to burn even in the rain and were probably sulfur-based.
Rush torches were very cheap and common just about everywhere. The torches that look like bundles of sticks you see some Greek and Roman statues holding were probably that type of torch. Rushes and similar pithy plants can soak up nearly any fat or semi-solid fuel and are very easy to make. Tallow (rendered animal fat) was probably most common, but pitch, bitumen, molten sulfur or other fuels could be used. It would burn as long as the fuel lasted and gradually burn down to nothing, since the rushes were completely soaked from end to end before being bundled.
Sconces were holders for all kinds of lighting devices. Depending on the design it could hold a stave-type torch, candles, or just contain a cup filled with a fat or other flammable liquid.
In most places and times, the lighting would be rushlights, oil lamps (burning damn near any kind of liquid or semi-liquid fuel), and candles in that order of commonality. Medieval torches are a modern conceit, but probably weren’t used for indoor lighting, and uncommonly outdoors as well. Honestly, guys standing watch on a wall would be practically blind if they used torches. Let your eyes adjust to the dark and you can see a lot farther. Experienced woodmen sit with their backs to a fire because you can’t see anything outside a fairly pitiful circle of light if you sit facing it and completely blow your night vision.
Movie torches, improvised with rags, a stick, and some flammable liquid (in the third Indiana Jones movie, he specifically mentions the petroleum floating on the water, neatly explaining both the torch and the later bad-guy-set explosion) would probably not burn for very long. But most of the time the screenplay doesn’t need them to burn for long. With or without the rag, a branch of resinous wood like cedar or pine, will burn for a surprising amount of time. A rag soaked in fuel will probably last at least 15–20 minutes, probably longer, and then you’ve got the handle for as long as you can comfortably hold it.
Wax torches, consisting of a wooden dowel, branch or heavy cardboard tube wrapped with strips of wax-soaked hessian or other corse plant-fiber fabric will burn 30-90min, depending on length. They are used nowadays for torchlight processions of garden illumination for BBQ parties (google “wax torches buy”). You can easily make then by melting down candle stubs, soaking strips of cotton or hemp fabric in the wax and wrapping the wax-soaked strips around a cardboard tube, leaving a handle free or inserting apiece of wood at the bottom for a handle
Cloth torches.
These torches are lighted at the tip and burn down slowly.
I opened this thread when there were two responses, but didn’t have time to post.
For weeks I actually have been intending to post virtually the same question. In films, it looks like torches are usually kerosene or naphtha soaked rags wrapped around a club. But in the periods depicted, people wouldn’t have kerosene or naphtha. Seeing (on TV) a torch made from rope wrapped around a club made me wonder how people centuries ago could have torches that burned for long enough periods to be useful.
Given that I knew pitch, beeswax, animal fat, and whatever oil was common in ancient times could be soaked into cloth that acts like a wick, my question would have been ‘How long would these really burn?’ You always see them in castles, in corridors that seem little-used. Obviously that’s a movie-thing. But it still makes me wonder how often the wick’s fuel needs to be replenished.
From the Wiki cite in Sleel’s informative post:
Sources give varying accounts of the length and burn-time of the average rushlight. The book of trades, or Library of the useful arts indicates that the average rushlight was 12 inches (30 cm) long and burned for 10 to 15 minutes.[9] Gilbert White reported that a rushlight 28.5 inches (72 cm) in length burned for 57 minutes; he wrote, “these rushes give a good clear light.” There was much variation in the quality of rushlights; a 19th-century writer observed that “one might very well flicker and splutter for an hour, whilst a second was just as likely to flame away in ten minutes.”[10]
A differently made rushlight in which two strips of the rind were left on the rush before it was coated with tallow produced a dimmer light but burned much longer. White referred to these as “watchlights.”[8]