How to start a fire with your bare hands

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/11/how-to-start-a-fire-with-your.html

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bare-hands

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I have the good fortune of living in a place where there’s both chert and pyrite. Percussion fire-making is so much easier than friction! (And as long as I’ve got my knife, I don’t have to mess with trying to get a spark off pyrite! I daresay I can find scrap steel, if not a better pyrophore, even in a post-apocalyptic world.)

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Well, strictly speaking, using only your bare hands (and not some simple tools like this guy does) would mean pointing your hand at some firewood and saying the magic words.

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After watching this, I fully expect you all to find my frozen corpse in the woods.

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Unless you’re like that dude in Brainspore’s post, this still isn’t “starting a fire with your bare hands.”

This is just “starting a fire with poor tools for the job.”

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After watching this, you will never forget your matches.

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I did the spinning stick thing at a scouting event long ago. Yes, it can be done by hand if you can find dry enough wood and tinder. I might try it if I was truly lost in a forest, but it took me a whole lot of time and energy to get it lit; energy I might not have if I were starving in the woods. I know it could go faster with practice, but it’s been decades since I practiced survival techniques for finding myself abandoned in an unfamiliar forest.

I’d have a lot more luck igniting a fire by jabbing the stick through my phone’s Li-po battery pack.

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Déjà vu:

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The real solution is to assemble a home machine shop, and then make yourself a custom fire piston.

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index

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I don’t know about y’all, but I start
ALL the fires with my bare hands.

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How to start a fire with your bare hands?

Watch Primitive Technology…

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I keep one of these in my backpack. You know, in case I ever need to start a fire on the train.

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tenor-5

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I clicked on this thinking I’d see someone starting fire with their bare hands, instead of the same video they posted a couple weeks ago under a different headline.

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I remember having to do that stuff in boy scouts as a kid, but as an adult I just keep a Swedish Firesteel in my backpack. Living in a rainforest a BIC can be a little tough to get a fire started when everything is damp even on a sunny day. I usually carry fire starters that I make which just consists of wax and wood shavings I’ve collected from around my radial arm saw.

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I’m starting fires with my mind, right now.

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I’ll start a fire with my hands. A fire between us, baby.

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