Soda can in fire

Then, using a small bit of rolled-up mugwort, he would have it smoking within three seconds and he had a coal within 10 seconds. Collect your tinder and roll it into the size of a cigarette.

In fact, a cigarette would make good tinder. I prefer a rolled-up piece of dried mugwort, a common wild plant along waterways. Mugwort was used in the old days by Southern California Indians when they wanted to transport a coal or ember. You can also use dried bark, various leaves, moss — anything that is dry and holds together well when rolled into a small shape. Point the bottom of the can towards the sun, and then move your tinder into the bottom area, watching for the point where the light focusses to a point.

When you find that point, keep your tinder there until you get your coal. This is akin to making a fire with a magnifying glass, except you are not focusing the light through the lens, but back up to a single point. Eric Zammit found he could fairly easily ignite mugwort using this method, as long as the bottom of the can was highly polished and as long as it was close to midday when the sun was directly overhead..

He could not ignite paper, though he was able to ignite leaves. Zammit had the best results by holding the can in his hands, and propping his elbows on his knees. Could you please let me in on it? I'd like to test it and see if it works before I have to deploy again.

Thank you very much for your time. Reply back to "Billy": The key question to ask here is Well, the bottom of the coke can happens to be an excellent reflector. That is once it is shined up. It's not shiny enough as it comes.

That's the job of the chocolate bar. Apparently chocolate can act as a polish. That "was" my first guess because I know that the bottom of a can is not shiny like you are mentioning I didn't think of using a chocolate bar, I just thought the bottom needed shinning up somehow first. It appears that there is trees reflecting off of it in the picture.

But I "never" thought of using a chocolate bar to do such a thing. That is wild. Who would've ever guessed such a thing? That's neater than sliced bread. I made it harder than it should have been apparently.

I'm going to polish one up to see how it does right now. I'll use some Hershey's Kisses, they're chocolate, extremely chocolaty at that. I'll have to wait for the clouds to leave this week to try it though. This will be most interesting. Wonder if the cold weather will effect the out come even if one has a bright sunny day. I've never used a reflector method in the winter time months. I'll let you know eventually how it turns out.

You did well :- Good stumper bro. That is a good one. Thanks friend for your time and info. What a deal :- Billy. I just now did it. Finally got some sun around here. I rolled the small amount of bark up like a thick cigarette a couple inches in length.

Folded it over on itself like you would see twist tobacco done. Tested focal point with finger, Ouch! Pointed can toward the sun and brought the bark in from the side as not to block the suns rays with my fingers in the way , rolled the bark around a bit to find a good surface area for the focal point of the light to hit flat and good.

Worked quite well actually. Put in other tinder ball, made fire. So there ya go, it does work. The following email was received from "Bob" in March We've been teaching "fire without matches" to new Boy Scouts in our troop T, Austin, TX for several years now.

As you might expect with year-old boys, the kids love it. This year someone brought me a printout from your website with instructions on the coke can and chocolate bar method of starting a fire. Looked interesting, so we added it to our instruction mix and gave it a try Since we needed to prep a number of cans for our classes, we cheated a bit and started our polishing with Comet cleanser, then moved up to a "whitening" toothpaste before finishing off with chocolate.

On a bright Texas winter day, about 60 degrees with no clouds, the cans gave us flames not just embers on pieces of shredded inner bark from Texas cedar in just minutes. Very consistent, if a bit fattening! A humorous take on this process, from "John" Apr This is a joke, right? I tried this several times and found it impossible to complete this task without eating all of the chocolate.

I even tried some cheap chocolate, like Palmers, that didn't taste very good. I still failed. Any suggestions? My wife thinks I should put duct tape over my mouth. I think that's a bit drastic. Another success story, from "Sarah" July Dude. This is awesome. I lit my cigarette off of the flame.

God bless the Florida sunlight, and my OCD which allowed me to polish the damn can for 2 hours. Anything to do with mirrors and sunlight fascinates me.

Our hiking group used to do a lot of long distance mirror signalling between mountains. I placed the can on a table so I could really bear down on it. After about 15 minutes if was very shiny and I managed to light a couple of dead leaves. Neat site Videos on YouTube Some people have made videos of their attempts to make fire using this method. Rob Bicevskis explains: "What we have created is more or less a parabolic reflector. Tracker Knife. Lyme Disease. Native People. Emergency Prep.

Young People. Wilderness Mind. Site Disclaimer. About this site. Use of material. Privacy Policy. Ok, let's get to it The can This is why the can needs polishing. Both are equally valuable. Because pop tabs are common and easy to collect, any individual or group can participate. Many schools support this project because it provides a terrific opportunity for children to get involved and make a genuine contribution to their community. Why are the tabs on aluminum cans worth more? They are not.

Beverage aluminum is all the same recycle price. The tabs take up less space though. It takes roughly 1, pop tabs to equal one pound. With approximately a half-ounce of aluminum per can, or 32 cans per pound, that makes each one worth about 1. Pull tabs can be dropped off at the House year round and are recycled. The funds raised by this recycling are used to help support the day to day operations of our House. If you are interested in getting involved or would like to know more, please click on the Get Involved button.

One of the primary markets for pop can tabs is eBay. Apparently, crafters like to use them on things they make and sell. Benbow says they caught on quickly, and by , most breweries had completely switched from pop-top cans to StaTabs. So, long story short, if you found a pop-top or pull-tab beer can, Benbow says you can safely assume it was made between and Soda cans are made from aluminum — and trace amounts of other metals, including magnesium, iron, and manganese.

Before the cans are created, the metals need to be extracted. Aluminum is made from Bauxite, an ore found mostly in Jamaica and Guinea. These are materials are refined into an aluminum oxide called Alumina.