This article is part of
Wilderness Way
VOLUME 13, ISSUE 2.
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Making Fire with the Bottom of an Aluminum Can
by Christopher Nyerges
Fire-making is one of the most basic survival skills. Once you realize the importance of fire, you always make sure that you carry fire-making devices with you at all times. You should learn about the modern devices for fire starting. Since matches and butane lighters can be used up, and because any product can be lost, it is important to also learn the primitive methods of fire starting. These so-called primitive methods include any of the ways to make fire with whatever you can find in the woods. This includes the hand-drill, the bow and drill, the plow, the thong, the saw. All of these should be practiced, and practiced often until you have mastered them.
There are countless variations on the basic fire-starting methods of chemical reactions, friction, and focusing of sunlight to a point.
Using a Discarded
Can
I was a bit excited to hear about a new method of
fire-making using the bottom of an aluminum beer or soda
can. The very bottom is not a true parabolic dish, but when
highly polished, it can be used to focus the sun’s rays to a
point and ignite tinder.
This is really worth knowing because aluminum cans are discarded everywhere, and I have seen them even in the most remote areas. Aluminum cans have several other uses as well, such as serving as a means to hold and boil water. They can be used for cooking small amounts of food, as a water filter (described in my How to Survive Anywhere book), as a candle lantern, and as a gas stove (“The Halcon Stove,” described in Volumn 10, Issue 3 of Wilderness Way).
The fact that we can make a fire from the aluminum can makes this piece of “trash” extremely valuable.Imagine! One discarded item can be used to make a fire, hold your water, and purify your water. In a survival situation, the discarded aluminum can could truly save your life.
Polishing the Bottom
Because the surface of the bottom of the aluminum can is not
polished, you need to give it a high polish in order for it
to sufficiently focus the sun’s rays. This is easiest done
with some fine steel wool. You will need to polish the
bottom for about 15 to 20 minutes, until you have an
obviously-bright and highly reflective surface. How do you
know you are done? You test it, and see how well you can
make a fire with it.
Some folks have suggested that this polishing be done with chocolate. I have tried this and found it to be very unsatisfactory. Chocolate does not polish as well as steel wool, and seems to take at least twice as long to get the polish of steel wool. So why is it recommended? I do not know! But I assume it is because a hiker or camper is likely to have chocolate in his pack, which could be the best polishing agent available under those circumstances.
Steel wool works best for polishing, but other products might work if you do not have steel wool. You can only discover this by experimentation.
Eric Zammit, who is an artist and experimenter, discovered by practice that he could quickly get a coal if he had polished the bottom of the can with the finest steel wool [0000] for about 10 minutes. He had a small bit of mugwort smoking within 3 seconds, and he had a coal within 10 seconds.
Once the bottom of the can has a high polish, you are ready to make fire.
Good Tinder
Collect your tinder and roll it into the size of a
cigarette. In fact, a cigarette would make a good tinder. I
like to use a rolled-up piece of mugwort. You can 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 focuses 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.
You may see that there is not a single fine point of light, such as you get with a magnifying glass. Rather, it is a smallish area where the light is focused. You will want to keep your can and tinder stabilized in one point for this to work. You will find that it is best to put the can on the ground and carefully hold it in one place, the bottom aimed at the sun.
Eric Zammit found that 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. Then he aligned the can with the sun by watching the can’s shadow until the shadow corresponded with the diameter of the can, but no larger.
“By holding the can at eye level, I could look under the mugwort to find the focal point of the light, and to put it right on the tip of the mugwort,” said Zammit.
He experimented by putting a hole into the inside middle of the can so that he could stick the little piece of mugwort in the hole. However, he did not get a coal with this method and found it unsatisfactory.
With practice, and the right polishing medium, you will have another fire-starting method that could one day save your life.
“Wow — this is cool, it really works! I was amazed at how fast this produced a coal,” said Zammit.
