Quest for fire

Posted on by

About a zillion years ago I used to teach hunter safety. It made sense that if there were going to be 12-year-olds wandering the woods with 7mm Remington Magnums perhaps I’d have a little self-interest in making sure they knew what not to shoot at since I’d be out there as well.

One part of the course was about helping them put together their little survival kits in case they got lost or had to spend the night out there. Of course, one of the big things was that they needed to have a way to start a fire. Now, these are twelve-year-olds…they’ve never heard of Occams Razor. Invariably, the majority of them would show up with a flint/steel or some other type of striker firestarter. And I would reach into my pocket and pull out a Bic lighter and a book of matches and ask why no one brought those.

Why make things harder than they have to be?

When I go out in the sticks, I carry one of those little scrape-the-rod firestarters and tinder with me. But I also carry at least two or three match safes, and a cigarette lighter. Yes, I know that cigarette lighters don’t always work in the numbing cold, at high altitudes, or when wet. Thats why I carry other methods of creating fire. But when its time to ignite something, I start with the lighter and work my way down the list.

One of the problems with a lighter like the ubiquitous Bic (uBicuitous?) is that if you don’t pack it right the thumb switch can be depressed and you lose all your fuel. Or the sparker gets wet  and the whole thing is useless. Which is where this comes in:

EXOTAC – fireSLEEVE Waterproof Lighter Holder Case. It’s a protective cover for your Bic. Keeps it dry and protects from inadvertently hitting the red button. A clever idea and one that sits in my Bag O’ Tricks ™. Also sits in my hunting pack and any other bag that I take with me into the woods.

In addition to protecting the lighter and keeping it dry, you also have a lanyard attachment point which is always nice when you want to keep a piece of critical gear from walking away.

Also, the lip of the case doubles as a strap to hold down the gas button on the lighter so you can keep it lit without having to use your finger to hold down the switch.

Nice to have? Absolutely. But, as I said, I don’t like to keep all my eggs in one basket. The lighter is the handiest and easiest thing to use in terms of having instant fire at your fingertips. But it’s also the most delicate and sensitive….this is why I never, ever rely on just carrying a lighter. I also carry math safes full of lifeboat matches and a couple other fire starting methods.

I know someone is going to chime in about their Zippo. Yeah, the Zippo is a fine lighter. It’s got a protective cover, which is nice, and runs on liquid fuel which makes it a better choice at altitudes. It also costs more, doesn’t have a lanyard attachment point, leaks in your pocket, and is heavy. Not saying it doesn’t work for you, just saying I see a lighter, cheaper, equally useful alternative that works for me.

And as I said, the lighter is the most convenient, handy, and lazy way to ignite something…but I always have a few others as well. Suspenders and a belt, m’friends.

24 thoughts on “Quest for fire”

  2. I have few Fire Sleeves for the Bics and a few Thyrm ProVaults (https://thyrm.com/product-category/pyrovault/) for the Zippo’s. Both work great. If you are using a standard flint Zippo, these will slow down the evaporation of the fuel. The will also hold a butane Zippo and has room for a tinder in the bottom.

  3. That’s pretty slick. Another Fun with Fuego item is a Soto Pocket Torch. It takes more square-ish Scripto type lighters instead of Bics. They are correct that the piezo sparker is finicky at altitude but when it does work it’s an awesome little torch.

  4. I carry a Bic, but in the winter I carry a Zippo as well. I sometimes have to heat a key when the lock to my shed freezes and if the wind is blowing (always here) I can’t keep a Bic lit. My Zippo works in the wind. I also cut a piece of bicycle inner tube and put over the Zippo where the lid and body meet. It keeps it from leaking and the fluid doesn’t evaporate as quick.

  6. I remember when I was a smoker, I ALWAYS had a lighter on my person. Game departments had a saying that lost smokers had that little edge on non smokers that a fire source was always on their person.

    My brand was Camel Filters, and Joe the Camel had a promotional freebie that was a neck corded container with a small lighter in top and a container allowing storage of about 8 cigarettes while you swam. Thing actually worked as long as O-ring was intact. About 5″ in length as I remember it.

    Haven’t thought of that in years. I quit smoking back in 1998. My current lighter has a small rolled piece of duct tape under the button but also serves as accellerent tinder for staring a fire (once).

    That Exotac appears to be a good piece of kit. Thanks for making us aware of it.

    • That cigarette promo stuff was great,still have a Marlboro cooler. I never smoked but a friend couldn’t use all his.

      • Yeah, Joe Camel had a lot of free stuff. T-Shirts / lighters / can carrier tube (six pack slung like an ammo bandoleer), the T-shirts are long gone (and too small anyway) the lighters dried up, but the can carriers are still here and there and still fit for service.

  8. I did not carry matches. I just carried multiple Bic lighters. No high altitude in South/Central Texas. I carried mine in medicine bottles. Also carried birthday candles inside and duct tape around the outside. Never had one lose fuel. Cheap too. Changed them out yearly. If one of the sparkers got “sticky” and would not rotate, put it on a piece of soft wood and push the lighter. It will get it going again after a few rotations.

    • Try the joke-shop birthday candles that don’t blow out. Note, they do blow out just not so easily, and try different brands.

  9. I once found a website on survival skills and the author went on about how he always carries a Friction Firebow Handhold (the top part) on his keyring, as this was the hardest part to make, and would last for years. He went on about how he would always have a way of making a fire. I remember thinking that’s still a lot of work for him. Why not just add a small Ferrocerium Rod and maybe a Peanut lighter [Google it]. Yes the lighter will need topping up every month or so, but the rod could be carried for a lifetime. The rod on my keyring has been there now for 18 years unused inside a Mcdonald’s straw with tape around it. It came back from the Falklands in 1982 so is well over 40 years old. Still not as good as a light AND light anywhere Matches [waterproof with nail varnish, just make sure that it has a fire danger on the back of the jar] but still a lot less work than a firebow.  

  11. The shiny steel strip in the middle of the BIC lighter striker wheel is a manual safety. It’s a spring with enough tension to keep little kids from being able to depress it enough to spin the striker wheel. And, it is easily removed with needle nose pliers. Because we’re grown-ups. Now you won’t have to take off your gloves to flick your BIC.

  12. I use a narrow zip tie fastened between the lighter’s body and the fuel lever. Idea found somewhere in the www.

  13. I’ve carried bic lighters for years, as survival gear. And I’ve found that they fail quite often, the striker wheel literally disintegrating within a year – even when unused, unwrapped, kept in a ziplock bag.

    Never mind the difficulties in using one when you’re hypothermic…..

    My go-to emergency fire lighter is a road flare. I’ve used 20 minutes of a 30 minute flare to get absolutely wet (pulled out of a lake) wood burning in the winter.

    I also carry a fire starter, cotton/vaseline balls, lifeboat matches, in addition to a Zippo.

    • I was trolling the free crap page on Craigslist a while back and came across someone who had saved up a disturbing number of small steel tins for some overpriced brand of breath mints — the sort that resemble the traditional containers for tea only they’re about 1.5 inch on a side — and my immediate reaction was “What would anyone do with these?”

      And then about 15 seconds later the lightbulb went on. One big container of house-brand Vaseline and a few weeks of setting aside the lint from drying my underwear and other cotton clothing, and I had enough little tins of fire-starter mix to stash at least one in every vehicle, rucksack, winter coat, set of LBE, etc — and those of friends and family too.

      $20 for a Bic lighter case is way too much for my penny-strangling self, but match safes are cheap enough still and eventually I’ll have a bright idea about a container for cheap disposable lighters that doesn’t cost as much as a huge box of the lighters themselves.

  14. Flints now used in lighter are not like they where.They use to be mad of Flint! Now a lot of them use a manmade flint which turns to dust in about a year. So if you have any old ones that have not turned to dust over a few years, if I was you I’d keep them safe. For long term storage of new ones the best way is to keep them in wax.
    It happens so often you use to be able [not so common now as postage has gone up] buy packs of 100 or 144 lighters with no flints on ebay cheap.

  15. I smoke cigars & always have them & a dependable way to light them wherever I go. I use a “torch”, a pressurized lighter that’s fueled with Butane. Winds aren’t a problem, neither is the altitude as I’ve used them on peaks over 14,000′ here in Colorado. They won’t accidentally release fuel as it takes a bit of force to light them, unlike a Bic. They run about $10 at a cigar shop although I’ve found them at gas stations as well.

Comments are closed.