Often during a country trip you have to kindle a fire. But how to light a match without a box? We offer to remember tips for tourists, using which you can travel without fear of freezing or being left without a hot dinner.
How to light a match
If there is only one match left in the box, how to light a match without a box? Not everyone will be able to make a full-fledged fire with it. To get out of this situation, certain skills are needed.
Instructions for kindling a fire from one match
If the matchbox is damp, why light a match? Or what if the box is lost, and there is only the match itself? In a children's cartoon, the characters offer to use a wick of dynamite, but in ordinary life this is hardly possible. There are chemicals such as ammonium nitrate, sulfur, and a phosphorus compound. These substances have low combustion temperatures. It takes a small amount of heat to light a match. What advice can you give to tourists who dream of finding a source of heat for a match? Look for a rough surface, heat up the match head by rubbing. But this method has its own characteristics. The found uneven surface should be fine-grained. Otherwise, all chemicals will fall off the match head, no fire will appear. The metal surface is ideal for friction. For example, an ax, a hammer, a knife blade can be used to heat a match head. There are three options for the development of events:
- the match will light up;
- she will break;
- the chemical composition will fly off the wooden base.
In order for the situation to be resolved in your favor, you need to act quickly, but carefully. The force with which you will perform friction should not be too large.
We make a fire
If you are traveling during the warm summer months, when it is dry and comfortable, there are no problems with making a fire. Simply take out a match and light it on the box or on a rough surface. When it is damp and cold outside, a natural question arises - how to light a match without a box. To light a fire on a camping trip, the following materials are required: firewood, wood chips or birch bark for kindling, matches.
So, instructions for making a fire in field conditions.
Before you go on a trip, stock up on kindling (birch bark, dry paper, small wood chips). It would be ideal to place the matchbox in a waterproof plastic bag to keep them from getting wet during the hike. In addition to matches, it is advisable to take a gas lighter with you on a trip; there are also special tourist matches. If they are available, you will not have a question about how to light a match without a box. Beginner tourists are sure that paper is the best "fuse" for a quick fire. In fact, this is not entirely correct. The paper burns too quickly, while the firewood does not have time to heat up to the ignition temperature. It is better to use dry spruce branches as kindling: they remain dry even during light rain. Spruce bark is also suitable as a material for making a fire: it contains a lot of resin, it will burn brightly and for a long time.
In order to light a match without a box, you have to work hard. It is better to avoid such troubles, and have 2-3 matchboxes in reserve. In order for a fire to ignite, it must be properly formed. To begin with, kindling is laid, then thin branches, sticks. Firewood can be stacked in two ways: in the form of a well or a hut. Such styling allows you to kindle a full-fledged fire without any problems. A match is brought to the kindling, then small twigs light up, and firewood from them.
Lighting a fire without matches
Tourists often ask professionals how to light a match without a box. Is it possible to light a fire without matches? There is no matchbox available, but there is flint? Its sparks are able to ignite poplar fluff, dandelion, thin birch bark. A winter fire, as well as a fire in damp times, can be made by arming. First, a floor is prepared on which to build a fire. For flooring, trimming plexiglass or rubber is suitable. When burning these substances, acrid smoke is released, so this method can only be used in emergency cases. In the most extreme situations, a fire is kindled with gasoline. Gasoline is a very volatile liquid, so there is a high risk of getting it on a person's clothing. As a result, the likelihood of burns increases. It is necessary to pour gasoline from the canister only in the direction of the wind.
Conclusion
Schoolchildren who decide to go on a camping trip should not forget about fire safety rules. Some are wondering, is it possible to light a match under water? Science gives a negative answer to this question. Without oxygen, combustion is impossible. Do not forget that a fire left unattended in the forest can lead to a serious fire. Before you leave the forest, be sure to put out the fire or cover it with earth, sand.
Campfire in field conditions often means the life of a traveler. It is simply impossible to overestimate its importance: the fire of a fire is warmth with which you can warm yourself, it is an opportunity to dry things, cook food. Sometimes fire is just an opportunity to survive. Usually we are used to kindling it with matches or a lighter, which are always at hand (many tourists take dry alcohol or some kind of liquid to kindle a fire with them on hikes). But this is not always at hand, and situations are different. And what if the situation is suddenly extreme: the matches are wet, the lighter does not work, the forest around after the rain and everything around is damp? What then? Die from the cold? Or still try to make a fire? But as?
I found on the net a very interesting project from Grigory Sokolov dedicated to non-standard methods of kindling a fire in field conditions - I share it. There are many of them and fire can be obtained almost always. I made a selection of the most interesting methods from his collection, maybe it will be useful to someone.
Method number 1. An old flint lighter that ran out of gas.
The most common situation in the campaign. There was the last lighter, but here's the annoyance - all the gas came out. What to do, how to get fire? The video answers this question. Even an empty lighter can provide you with fire and warmth.
Method number 2. Obtaining fire in a damp forest by friction.
Situation: For making fire, only a knife and a small piece of rope are at hand. It has recently rained in the forest and everything around is damp and wet. Technique - we kindle a fire with the help of friction with a bow.
Method number 3. Getting fire from a battery and a small piece of foil.
Batteries in our time are such a thing that very often are at hand. Know that if you have a battery and some foil, for example from some kind of food packaging, then you also have a fire.
Method number 4. Friction method with wire
A knife and a small piece of steel wire is actually all that is needed to make fire in this way. And yes, a little exercise. 🙂
Method number 5. Method of making fire by rolling cotton wool with chalk
In places where people used to live, in old abandoned houses, you can always find cotton wool. In furniture, mattresses, upholstery. Chalk - whitewashing the walls. With this method, you can get fire.
Method number 6. Getting fire with the sun and a condom
A condom in a campaign is generally speaking a useful thing. In addition to its direct purpose, it can be used as a hermetic bag, as a container for storing water, and below - as a means for kindling a fire in field conditions.
Method number 7. Getting fire with a spoon and the sun.
An ordinary steel spoon, which should be slightly bent, a little soot from a kettle and a piece of toilet paper - that's all that is needed to make fire. Yes, and of course - sunny weather.
Method number 8. Getting fire from the sun and an old gas bottle
The old gas cylinder has one very useful part for this method of making fire. Namely, the bottom. An empty beer can, by the way, will also work.
Method number 9. Fire from the sun and a reflector from a flashlight
It turns out that the reflector of a flashlight, headlight or any other device for directional light is an almost perfect lens for getting fire from the sun.
Method number 10. Fire from the sun and two bottoms of bottles
“Use what is at hand and do not look for another.” (c) Vilias Fog. In this case, the fire is produced from garbage, which is often much more around than required. The design, consisting of the bottoms of two glass bottles, a small amount of water and, of course, the sun may well provide you with fire.
Method number 11. Old light bulb, water and sun.
Old light bulbs can be found in a place where people once lived. And they can do a good job in making fire, if there is nothing else at hand.
Method number 12. Ice + sun = fire!
And finally - a completely extreme technology of making fire. Ice, sun, cleaver and a little hard work. Hardly useful, but very impressive!
Grigory Sokolov - many thanks for the material provided.
Lighting a match is one of the oldest and most reliable ways to start a fire. Matches create fire by friction against the striking surface ("grater"), which ignites flammable fuel.
There are different situations in life and sometimes it happens that you have matches, but there is no box to light them on...
It turns out that you can set fire to matches against each other! You just need to take four matches more firmly, and then hit them with the head of the fifth match. Due to the friction of the gray-coated heads, a spark will occur and spontaneous combustion will occur.
How to do it - see the video. Of course, some skill is required. For example, while I "got" the fire, I exhausted the floor with a box of matches :) ...
At different times, a wide variety of types of matches were born. The Romans used a magnifying glass and sunlight to set fire to the sulfur-coated torches. The Chinese impregnated wooden sticks with sulfur, and they ignited from smoldering tinder. In France, a mass of bartolet salt, sugar, resin and sulfur was applied to the base, which was fixed with viscous glue and acacia tree resin. Some of the experiments were explosive.
Over time, matches began to be coated with a mixture that included phosphorus. It was thanks to him that the ignition process became safer, the substance weakened the explosive properties of the mixture. But it had a bad effect on the health of workers and, although it did not explode, it ignited at low temperatures. Carrying such cargo became unsafe.
The problem was solved by the discovery of red safe phosphorus, which began to be used instead of poisonous white. The wand itself is made from soft woods, often from waste products from the woodworking industry. Linden, pine, poplar or aspen are used. Special types of matches are made from a cotton cord impregnated with paraffin (then dried to a solid state), and even from cardboard.
Traditional matches according to the rules must be lit on a special surface. Usually these are the sides of the box, on which a special mixture is applied, which mainly consists of phosphorus and antimony sulphide. If there is no box at hand, you need to come up with another method of ignition.
What else can you strike a match on, besides a matchbox, to achieve the desired effect (fire)?
It takes a small amount of heat to light a match.
Look for a rough surface, heat up the match head by rubbing. But this method has its own characteristics. Found uneven surface should be fine-grained. Otherwise, all chemicals will fall off the match head, no fire will appear.
metal surface b - ideal for friction. For example, an ax, a hammer, a knife blade can be used to heat a match head.
There are three options for the development of events:
- the match will light up;
- she will break;
- the chemical composition will fly off the wooden base.
In order for the situation to be resolved in your favor, you need to act quickly, but carefully. The force with which you will perform friction should not be too large.
Try lighting a match on hard building materials.
If you're in the civilized world but don't have a box of graters handy, you can use the materials you have on hand as a last resort. Just strike the match as if you were using a box, applying less pressure to the match if the material is hard. However, it is very important that the material is dry. You can use the following surfaces: Concrete, Plaster (between tiles, etc.), Brick, Ceramic.
If you are left without a box in the garage or workshop, then sandpaper helps to light a match. Used sandpaper works best - hard sandpaper can rub off the match head instead of lighting it. Just lay a piece of sandpaper on a flat surface, press the match head against it and scratch it like a grater.
Tourists and travelers must be able to light a match on a rock if you want to improve your survival skills in adverse conditions. For best results, find a flat, dry stone with a slightly rough "grinding" surface. The texture should be similar to concrete pavement.
As noted above, the stone must be dry. If you can't find a dry stone, find a comfortable wet stone, rub it on your clothes and carry it around in your pocket or leave it somewhere to dry.
Hold the match between your middle and thumb fingers and press the match head against the stone with your index finger. Press the head with your index finger and run it over the grater in one quick motion.
The harder the surface of the stone, the less pressure you need to put on the match head during friction.
Try carefully lighting a match against your zipper. This is a great party trick, but it must be done very carefully to avoid injury. Expose the zipper (on pants or jacket) and make it as straight and flat as possible. Take a match in your free hand, press it against the top of your zipper and strike down, pressing it lightly. This is a pretty tricky trick, so don't be surprised if it takes you a long time to learn it.
Always strike towards the floor, not towards your face. So, if you lose control of the match, it will fall to the floor, not to your shirt.
Only try this trick if your pants are made of a strong, thin material (such as denim) that is unlikely to catch fire. Don't try it in shorts or open shoes.
Try lighting a match from the window. Surprisingly, even perfectly flat glass can light a match. You will need to apply a lot of force in this case, so put your index finger directly on the head of the match: this way you can push it with more force.
Press the list head against the glass, then strike the match down in one swift motion while maintaining firm pressure on it. Remove your index finger from the lit match head to avoid injury.
This method can leave streaks on the glass, which are usually removed from the glass without problems.
Five more ways to light a match without a box:
In addition to the above methods, you can add one more: set fire to a match simply from a gas stove, from the shade of heating appliances, or with the help of sunlight passed through a magnifying glass.
How to hold a lit match
Always strike a match away from yourself. Do not keep a lit match close to you.
Hold the match slightly at an angle so that it continues to burn. The main rule is that fire spreads faster if it has somewhere to “climb”. This is true even on a small scale. The more the match is tilted to the floor with its head, the faster it will burn to the ground.
The correct angle of inclination makes the flame burn brightly and not "scramble" to your fingers too quickly. You can always change the angle of the match if you need more time than you intended.
Hold the match at a low angle if you need a very large flame. If you need it as quickly as possible, hold the match straight (base to ceiling) for a second or two. The flame will spread upward very quickly and will be larger than when the match is tilted. However, this flame will also be hotter and closer to your fingers, so be very careful.
Try to avoid a strictly vertical position of the match (base to the ceiling). There is a high chance that you will burn your fingers or start a fire without holding a hot match.
Hold the match straight up (bottom to the floor) for a small flame that quickly goes out. The flame will become smaller and burn less as the match head has limited fuel. The flame may slowly crawl down to your finger, or it may extinguish itself.
Original entry and comments on
Everyone should know how to kindle a fire - with such knowledge you will not be lost. A real dude definitely knows how to start a fire without matches. This is a necessary skill for survival. It is impossible to guess when you need to build a fire, and there will be no matches at hand. Maybe your plane will crash in some wild area, like somewhere in Alaska. Or, for example, you go into the forest and lose your backpack in a fight with a bear. Eventually, you may end up in very windy or wet conditions where matches are practically useless. It doesn't matter if you ever need these skills, but it's still very cool to know how to make fire, no matter what conditions you are in.
Making fire by friction
Making fire by friction is not for the faint of heart. Perhaps this is the most difficult of the "non-match" methods of making fire. There are different ways to make fire by friction, but the most important thing in this matter is what kind of wood to use as a plank and rod.
The rod is a stick that needs to be twisted back and forth around its axis in order to create strong friction between it and the plank to produce a spark. If you create a strong enough friction between the rod and the plank, you can get embers and use them to start a fire. Poplar, juniper, aspen, willow, cedar, cypress and walnut are best suited for making fire in this way.
An important point: the wood must be dry.
hand drill
The hand drill method is the most primitive, simple and at the same time the most difficult. All that is needed for that method is a tree, strong hands and iron patience. Applying this method, you will feel like a real primitive man. So, we make fire with a hand drill:
Gather the tinder into a compact pile that resembles a bird's nest. The nest of tinder will be used to ignite the flame obtained from the spark that we have to extract. Such a "nest" should be made of material that catches fire easily, such as dry grass, leaves or bark.
Make a small indentation in the "nest". Cut a v-shaped hole in the fire board and make a small indentation next to it.
Place the bark under this depression. Smoldering coals arising from the friction of the rod against the board will fall on it - this will give the fire a chance to flare up.
Start rotating the rod. Place the rod in the recess on the plank. The length of the rod must be at least 60 cm for everything to work properly. Press the rod against the plank and rotate it between your palms, moving them quickly up and down the rod. Keep doing this until embers form in the hole of the fire board.
Fan the fire! As soon as you see the red coals, knock on the fire board so that they fall on a piece of bark located under the hole. Move the bark to your "nest" of tinder. Carefully and carefully blow on the coals to start the flame.
fire plow
Prepare the board for the fire. Cut a hole in the board where you will put the rod.
Three! Take a rod and place its end in the recess on the fire board. Start rubbing the tip of the rod against the walls of the recess in the plank, moving it up and down.
Start lighting a fire. Position the "nest" of tinder so that smoldering embers, which will arise from friction, fall into it. As soon as you catch an ember, gently blow on it - and get a small tongue of living flame.
bow drill
The use of a bow for making fire is probably the most effective of the friction methods, because it is easier to maintain a high pressure and speed of rotation of the rod. There is a strong friction necessary for making fire. In addition to the rod and plank, this method will require a weighting agent to hold the rod, and a bow.
Make a weight device. It is used to press on the end of the rod that is on top: the rod is set in motion with the help of a bow and because of this becomes unstable. To hold the rod, you can use a stone or a piece of wood. If you use a piece of wood, it must be harder than the rod. It is very good to use water or oil as a lubricant to make things go better.
Make a bow. It should be the same length as your arm. Use a flexible, slightly twisted wooden vine. The string of a bow can be made from anything, such as cord, rope, or a strip of rawhide of rough tanning. One condition: it must be a durable material that will not tear. Stretch the string and you're ready to start making fire.
Prepare the board for the fire. Cut out a v-shaped hole, place tinder under the hole.
Wrap the rod with a bowstring. Place the rod in the bowstring loop. One end of the rod should be in the hole that you made in the plank, and the other end should be pressed with a stone or piece of wood.
Start moving the bow. Move the bow back and forth in a horizontal plane, just like when sawing something. As a matter of fact, now you have assembled an elementary mechanical system. The rod must rotate quickly. Keep moving the bow until you get coals.
Set the fire on fire. Throw the embers into the tinder and lightly blow on them. Ready! Now you've lit the fire.
Flint and steel
This is the old method. Having a good flint and steel with you is always a good idea. Matches can get wet and they're useless, but then you can still rely on your flint and steel.
If these things were not at hand, no one forbids you to improvise using quartzite and the steel blade of a pocket knife.
You will also need a fire starter, usually cloth or moss. They catch a spark well and smolder for a long time without flaring up. If you do not have special material for ignition, then a piece of mushroom or birch bark is quite suitable.
Fix the ignition material and stone. Grab the stone with your thumb and forefinger. Make sure that the distance from the fingers to the edge of the stone is approximately 5-7 cm. The ignition material should be between the thumb and the flint.
Bay! Take a steel bar or use a knife handle. Hit steel on flint several times. Sparks will fly off the steel and land on the ignition material, causing smoldering.
Kindle the fire. Place the fire starter material in the tinder "nest" and lightly blow on it to fan the flame.
Making fire with a lens
Lighting a fire is easy with a lens. Anyone who melted plastic soldiers with a magnifying glass as a child knows how to do it. If you have never done such things, then here is the instruction for you.
Traditional lenses
All that is required to produce fire is a lens, which is necessary to concentrate sunlight on a certain place. A magnifying glass, glasses or binocular lenses are fine. If you add a little water to the surface of the lens, you can enhance the beam.
Rotate the lens at an angle to the sun to focus the beam on as small an area as possible. Place a "nest" of tinder to this spot, and a fire will soon flare up.
The only downside to this method is that it only works when there is sun. Therefore, if it happens in the evening or on a cloudy day, the lens will be useless.
In addition to the simple method of making fire with a lens, there are three additional methods of making fire with a lens that also allow you to make fire.
Balloons and condoms
By filling a balloon or a condom with water, you can turn these simple things into a lens that will help start a fire.
Fill a condom or balloon with water and tie off the end. Give the ball or condom the most spherical shape. Do not inflate the condom or balloon too much, as this will distort the focus of the sun's beam. Squeeze the balloon into a shape that will focus the beam. Try to squeeze the condom down the middle to form two smaller lenses.
Condoms and balloons have a shorter focal length than ordinary lenses, so they should be placed 2-5 cm away from the tinder.
Making fire with ice
Ice and fire is not only a quote from Pushkin, which you probably remember from a school literature course. With the help of a piece of ice, you can actually make a fire. All you need to do to do this is to shape a piece of ice into a lens and then use it for its intended purpose, like any other lens. This method is especially good for hikers in the winter.
Get clean water. In order for ice to be made into a lens, it must be transparent. If the ice is cloudy or contains any impurities, then, no matter how hard you fight, you will not get fire with it. The best way to get a clear piece of ice is to fill a bowl or cup with clear water from a lake, pond, or melted snow and let the water freeze. A piece of ice should be about 5 cm thick to serve as a good lens.
Shape a piece of ice into a lens shape with a knife. Remember that the lens is thicker in the middle and narrower near the edges.
After you get a rough lens, polish it with your hands. The heat from your hands will melt the ice enough to create a nice smooth surface.
Start making fire. Set the ice lens at an angle to the sun in the same way as if it were a normal glass lens. Concentrate a beam of light on a pile of tinder and see how useful it is to remember Alexander Sergeevich's quote.
Coca-Cola can and chocolate bar
I saw this way in a YouTube video, quite an interesting thing. All we need is a can of Coca-Cola, a bar of chocolate and a sunny day.
Open the bar of chocolate and start rubbing the chocolate itself against the bottom of the jar. Such polishing will make the surface of the tin bottom shining like a mirror. If you don't have chocolate with you, toothpaste works the same way.
Get fire. After polishing, you essentially got a parabolic mirror. Sunlight will bounce off the bottom of the jar and focus on one spot. This is somewhat reminiscent of the principle of operation of mirrors in a telescope.
Turn the polished bottom of the jar towards the sun. This way you will create a perfectly focused beam of light aimed directly at the tinder. Place the tinder at a distance of approximately 2-3 cm from the focus of sunlight. After a few seconds, a flame should appear.
While I can’t imagine that I ended up somewhere on the edge of the world with a can of Coke and a chocolate bar, but this method of making fire really works.
Batteries and natural wool
As with chocolate and a bottle, it's hard to imagine a situation in which you can find yourself in extreme conditions without matches, but with batteries and a piece of clean wool. But you never know how life will turn out. This method is quite simple and fun, so you can try it at home.
Stretch a piece of wool. It is necessary that the strip of wool be approximately 15 cm long and 1 cm wide.
Rub the battery with a piece of wool. Hold the strip of wool in one hand and the battery in the other. Any battery will do, but the optimal power is 9 watts. Rub the side of the battery with the "contacts" with wool. The wool will ignite. Lightly blow on it.
Transfer the burning wool to the tinder. Wool will not burn for long, so hurry up!
Lighting a match is one of the oldest and most reliable ways to start a fire. Matches create fire by friction against the striking surface ("grater"), which ignites flammable fuel.
There are different situations in life and sometimes it happens that you have matches, but there is no box to light them on...
It turns out that you can set fire to matches against each other! You just need to take four matches more firmly, and then hit them with the head of the fifth match. Due to the friction of the gray-coated heads, a spark will occur and spontaneous combustion will occur.
How to do it - see the video. Of course, some skill is required. For example, while I "got" the fire, I exhausted the floor with a box of matches :) ...
At different times, a wide variety of types of matches were born. The Romans used a magnifying glass and sunlight to set fire to the sulfur-coated torches. The Chinese impregnated wooden sticks with sulfur, and they ignited from smoldering tinder. In France, a mass of bartolet salt, sugar, resin and sulfur was applied to the base, which was fixed with viscous glue and acacia tree resin. Some of the experiments were explosive.
Over time, matches began to be coated with a mixture that included phosphorus. It was thanks to him that the ignition process became safer, the substance weakened the explosive properties of the mixture. But it had a bad effect on the health of workers and, although it did not explode, it ignited at low temperatures. Carrying such cargo became unsafe.
The problem was solved by the discovery of red safe phosphorus, which began to be used instead of poisonous white. The wand itself is made from soft woods, often from waste products from the woodworking industry. Linden, pine, poplar or aspen are used. Special types of matches are made from a cotton cord impregnated with paraffin (then dried to a solid state), and even from cardboard.
Traditional matches according to the rules must be lit on a special surface. Usually these are the sides of the box, on which a special mixture is applied, which mainly consists of phosphorus and antimony sulphide. If there is no box at hand, you need to come up with another method of ignition.
What else can you strike a match on, besides a matchbox, to achieve the desired effect (fire)?
It takes a small amount of heat to light a match.
Look for a rough surface, heat up the match head by rubbing. But this method has its own characteristics. Found uneven surface should be fine-grained. Otherwise, all chemicals will fall off the match head, no fire will appear.
metal surface b - ideal for friction. For example, an ax, a hammer, a knife blade can be used to heat a match head.
There are three options for the development of events:
- the match will light up;
- she will break;
- the chemical composition will fly off the wooden base.
In order for the situation to be resolved in your favor, you need to act quickly, but carefully. The force with which you will perform friction should not be too large.
Try lighting a match on hard building materials.
If you're in the civilized world but don't have a box of graters handy, you can use the materials you have on hand as a last resort. Just strike the match as if you were using a box, applying less pressure to the match if the material is hard. However, it is very important that the material is dry. You can use the following surfaces: Concrete, Plaster (between tiles, etc.), Brick, Ceramic.
If you are left without a box in the garage or workshop, then sandpaper helps to light a match. Used sandpaper works best - hard sandpaper can rub off the match head instead of lighting it. Just lay a piece of sandpaper on a flat surface, press the match head against it and scratch it like a grater.
Tourists and travelers must be able to light a match on a rock if you want to improve your survival skills in adverse conditions. For best results, find a flat, dry stone with a slightly rough "grinding" surface. The texture should be similar to concrete pavement.
As noted above, the stone must be dry. If you can't find a dry stone, find a comfortable wet stone, rub it on your clothes and carry it around in your pocket or leave it somewhere to dry.
Hold the match between your middle and thumb fingers and press the match head against the stone with your index finger. Press the head with your index finger and run it over the grater in one quick motion.
The harder the surface of the stone, the less pressure you need to put on the match head during friction.
Try carefully lighting a match against your zipper. This is a great party trick, but it must be done very carefully to avoid injury. Expose the zipper (on pants or jacket) and make it as straight and flat as possible. Take a match in your free hand, press it against the top of your zipper and strike down, pressing it lightly. This is a pretty tricky trick, so don't be surprised if it takes you a long time to learn it.
Always strike towards the floor, not towards your face. So, if you lose control of the match, it will fall to the floor, not to your shirt.
Only try this trick if your pants are made of a strong, thin material (such as denim) that is unlikely to catch fire. Don't try it in shorts or open shoes.
Try lighting a match from the window. Surprisingly, even perfectly flat glass can light a match. You will need to apply a lot of force in this case, so put your index finger directly on the head of the match: this way you can push it with more force.
Press the list head against the glass, then strike the match down in one swift motion while maintaining firm pressure on it. Remove your index finger from the lit match head to avoid injury.
This method can leave streaks on the glass, which are usually removed from the glass without problems.
Five more ways to light a match without a box:
In addition to the above methods, you can add one more: set fire to a match simply from a gas stove, from the shade of heating appliances, or with the help of sunlight passed through a magnifying glass.
How to hold a lit match
Always strike a match away from yourself. Do not keep a lit match close to you.
Hold the match slightly at an angle so that it continues to burn. The main rule is that fire spreads faster if it has somewhere to “climb”. This is true even on a small scale. The more the match is tilted to the floor with its head, the faster it will burn to the ground.
The correct angle of inclination makes the flame burn brightly and not "scramble" to your fingers too quickly. You can always change the angle of the match if you need more time than you intended.
Hold the match at a low angle if you need a very large flame. If you need it as quickly as possible, hold the match straight (base to ceiling) for a second or two. The flame will spread upward very quickly and will be larger than when the match is tilted. However, this flame will also be hotter and closer to your fingers, so be very careful.
Try to avoid a strictly vertical position of the match (base to the ceiling). There is a high chance that you will burn your fingers or start a fire without holding a hot match.
Hold the match straight up (bottom to the floor) for a small flame that quickly goes out. The flame will become smaller and burn less as the match head has limited fuel. The flame may slowly crawl down to your finger, or it may extinguish itself.
Be mindful of the wind. Light a match outdoors very carefully in windy weather. The wind can easily blow out your match. Light matches in a calm place or wait for it to die down.
If you need to light a match in the wind, you can shield the match from the wind with your body, standing with your back to it, or with your hand.
And remember: matches are not toys!
Tips for all occasions.
