101 Skills You Need to Survive in the Woods by Kevin Estela

Author:Kevin Estela [Estela, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Page Street Publishing Co.
Published: 2019-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

A rolling hitch used around a flashlight body.

The body of the flashlight is easier to grab than the line on its own.

SKILL #50

FIRE WITH YOUR FLASHLIGHT

A flashlight doesn’t seem to have many purposes other than illumination. During courses, I like to show students how to make their flashlight more than a light but a fire starter too. Since many of the modern flashlights use lithium batteries, they have a great power source that can be exploited. Assuming you are carrying fine steel wool in your kit to remove rust from your tools, you can pair it with a lithium battery to start a fire. All you need to do is stretch a piece of steel wool to allow it to reach the positive and negative ends. This will instantly ignite the steel wool when the battery creates a short circuit, and as long as you have additional tinder handy, the steel wool will burn between 800 and 1800°F (427°–982°C), with enough heat to start your fire.

Assuming your batteries are dead, you have a chance to make fire with another part of your flashlight: the reflector. Your reflector found in your flashlight head is designed to concentrate a beam in a single spot. Reflectors are constructed differently, and some will work better than others. You need to have perfect tinder that is supremely dry and the sun needs to be strong enough for this to work. Also, if you have a pair of sunglasses, you should wear them as staring at the concentrated beam of light on your tinder can make your eyes sore. All you need to do to make a fire with a flashlight reflector is to remove the reflector unit from the flashlight head. Hold the reflector in one hand angled at the sun and hold the tinder between your thumb and forefinger of your other hand. Experiment with moving the reflector different distances from the tinder until the beam of light is most concentrated. You’ll find the beam will start off wide, become narrow and tight and then become wide again when you move too close. Hold the beam on your tinder and you’ll hopefully get it to smolder. This glowing orange tinder can then be added to a larger tinder bundle and blown into a flame.

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