There are many ways to start a fire without matches or a lighter. But, ideally, you should never find yourself in a situation where you need to use one of these methods.
Matches and match-less fire starters are some items you should always carry with you, just in case.
This is especially true when going into nature. Even the most skilled outdoors people can get lost or have accidents that cause them to spend an unplanned night in the wild.
In this situation, the ability to make fire could mean the difference between life and death. You need fire for things like:
So, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to bring a reliable fire starter when going outdoors (even on day hikes!).
But I get it.
Things happen, and you might need to know how to start a fire without matches.
Let’s dig in.
How To Start a Fire Without A Lighter: It’s All About the Tinder
With almost all of these methods, you only get a small spark. At best, you get a tiny ember that dies out quickly. It is challenging to make a fire from just a spark or ember!
To succeed, you will need to have good tinder ready. Ideally, you have a char cloth with you. Char cloth can be ignited with a single spark, even at lower temperatures. Then it is used to ignite tinder.
Read:
Friction Methods
Most of the ways to make a fire without lighters rely on friction. You’ve probably seen it done in movies. They make it seem as easy as banging two rocks together.
Friction fire-starting is relatively simple but is very labor-intensive. Don’t expect it to be as easy as you saw on TV!
Instead of just rubbing two sticks together or banging rocks, you’ll have much more success using one of the methods below.
1. Hand Drill
The hand drill is the most basic of the friction fire-starting methods.
You will need a baseboard, such as a larger branch or even the top of a tree stump, to make it work. And you will also need an arm-length stick.
Here is what you do:
- Make a notch in your baseboard. The notch should be just big enough to fit your stick.
- Squeeze the stick into the notch.
- Put your tinder next to the notch.
- Spin the stick back and forth in the notch using your hands and a lot of downward force.
- Sparks should start to appear, and these sparks will light your tinder.
- Blow on the tinder to get the sparks to form a flame.
2. String or Bow Drill
This method works in the same way as the hand drill. The difference is that you use a piece of string or rope (like your shoelace or a piece of paracord) to rotate the stick.
There are a couple of ways to make your drill. One is to create a “bow” and twist the stick into it. Then, when you pull the bow, it will cause the shaft to rotate.
3. Fire Plough
Instead of rotating the stick to create friction, you can rub it back and forth in a fire plough (also called a fire plow).
To make a fire plow, you need a board with a groove going down its length. The groove is necessary for catching sparks and embers.
You cut a second stick to a dull point. Then you rub the stick up and down the groove. This produces friction as well as little pieces of wood dust that ignite. Once you’ve got enough lit dust in the groove, you can put it in your tinder.
4. Rudiger Roll Method (Fire Roll)
This is a personal favorite of mine. Legend has it that prisoners invented this method of starting a fire in WWII to light their cigarettes.
Here’s how it works:
- Use a flattened piece of flammable fibrous material, such as cotton, jute, or hemp.
- Lay the material onto a flat surface.
- Cover it with ashes, rust, tobacco, or even the contents of oxygen absorber packs. This is to create more friction and act as an accelerant. You can do it with the fiber material, but it will require much more friction.
- Roll the material up.
- Press a flat item on top (like a board) to roll it very tightly.
Then use the board to roll the bundle back/forth rapidly. It should start smoldering very quickly.
5. Flint and Steel
A flint and steel are one of the most primitive methods of starting fires without matches. It consists of two parts: A steel that gets struck against a flint.
The Flint:
Flint is a harder form of the mineral quartz. It has a hardness of about 6. Hardness is important. If you try to use a softer rock, it won’t be hard enough to shave away the steel pieces.
If you can’t find flint, you can also use:
- Chert
- Jasper
- Quartz
- Obsidian
- Granite
- Agate
Tip:
Any stone that scratches glass is probably hard enough to make sparks.
The Steel:
Before steel was invented, people used the mineral iron pyrite to strike against flint. Today, you can buy cool stuff like steel strikers for fire making.
Good fire steels are made from high-carbon steel treated to an ideal hardness. They will give off millions of sparks when hit.
However, it is possible to improvise a steel striker. A good survival knife will work. So will things like an old shop file. These will work, but they won’t produce as many sparks as a fire steel.
How Flint and Steels Work in Fire Starting
A flint and steelworks for fire starting because the flint is harder than the steel.
When you hit the flint with the steel, it causes little iron pieces from the steel to curl off. The friction and exposure to air cause the iron to ignite. These are the sparks you see.
Thus, the steel is starting the fire, not the flint (even though it is the flint you see chipping away).
Here’s a quality flint and steel fire starting set with a stylish leather pouch on Amazon.
6. Ferro Rod Striker
A Ferro (short for ferrocerium) rod works a lot like a flint and steel. However, they are entirely different things. A Ferro rod is made of a unique material that gets VERY HOT when struck.
It will produce sparks that are in the 5,400F range. Compare this to the 800F sparks made by flint and steel.
The higher temperature makes it much easier to start a fire with a Ferro rod than with flint and steel. A Ferro rod is a much better choice if you carry a striker around for survival purposes.
We love this Uberleben Ferro Rod on Amazon.
Read: How to Use a Ferro Rod: Expert Tips
7. Using an Empty Lighter to Start a Fire
You brought a lighter along, but it ran out of fuel? You can still use it to start a fire.
This falls under the friction methods of fire starting because there is a tiny flint inside the lighter (often ferrocerium, technically not a flint). The flint is what supplies material for the sparks when you spin the spark wheel.
Here’s how to do it:
- Remove the lighter’s metal safety guard.
- Hold the lighter upside down over tinder.
- Gently spine the spark wheel. You do NOT want to make sparks.
- Little pieces of ferrocerium will fall onto your tinder.
- When you have a good pile of Ferro shavings (after about 2 minutes), you can spark the lighter next to them. They will ignite!
Note that the Ferro shavings will only stay lit for a fraction of a second. You must have your tinder ready to catch the flame!
Tip:
If it is a Bic-style lighter, you can use your survival knife to shave little pieces of plastic from the lighter case. These are great tinder.
Solar Methods
These methods of starting a fire without a lighter only work during the day and when the sun is powerful.
In real-life survival situations, you probably aren’t going to get that lucky. Night might fall before you realize you need to start a fire. It rains. Or there are simply too many trees around.
Still, you can plan ahead if you know that you will need to make a fire and don’t have any matches or a lighter. When you get some good sun, use it to make a fire and then use a torch to carry embers with you.
8. The Magnifying Glass in Your Compass
Most of us don’t carry a magnifying glass anywhere, especially in nature. However, your compass might have a magnifying glass on it. You can use this to create a fire on sunny days.
It is (almost) as easy as they show in movies. Just focus the light on some tinder and hold your hand very steady. In just a few minutes, the tinder will ignite.
This type of magnifier on Amazon would work well.
9. Sandwich Bag Filled with Water
You might have heard of this trick for making a fire without matches. Yes, it does work (and is damn cool).
What you do is fill a clear sandwich bag with water. Then squeeze the bag to have a sphere shape filled with water. Now you have two curved sides (biconvex), which together will capture and focus light.
Essentially, you’ve just created a magnifying glass.
The video below shows how well this works in bright sunlight.
*You can also use a water bottle filled with water, but it won’t be nearly as effective as the sphere shape created by a plastic baggie.
10. Eye Glasses
This is another method that you always see in movies and TVs. As you’d expect, it doesn’t usually work in real life. Most eyeglasses simply don’t focus light enough to produce a fire.
Here’s what you need to know:
It only works if you are farsighted.
Glasses work by bending the light before it reaches your eyes. If you are nearsighted, glasses bend the light further away from your eyes. Thus, nearsighted glasses will disperse sunlight instead of focusing it.
If you are farsighted, your glasses will focus the light closer. So, they will condense sunlight and can be used for starting a fire.
Put a drop of water on the glasses lens.
Unlike magnifying glasses, your eyeglasses are not biconvex (curved in both directions). So, eyeglasses will only bend the light one time.
This means that most eyeglasses simply won’t condense the light enough to create a fire – especially if you don’t have something like a char cloth to ignite.
However, if you put a drop of water onto the middle of the lens, it will bend the light, so it focuses more, creating a much stronger beam of light.
Or double the lenses.
Another way to make the eyeglasses fire work is to double the lens. Simply break the glasses and put one lens on top of another. The video shows that this will increase the lens’s focus, so the sunlight is concentrated into a more powerful beam.
This means that you now have broken glasses, so it’s not the best solution if you need your glasses to see. Maybe you’ll be lucky, and two members of your group will wear glasses that you can layer on top of each other.
11. Mirror
Some beauty mirrors curve inwards (concave), meaning they can focus sunlight into a tight, hot beam. Firefighters even issued warnings that people shouldn’t keep these mirrors near windows because of the risk of fires.
However, starting a fire with a flat mirror is a lot more challenging. Pointing the light beam to get the area hot would take a long time. The earth would have rotated by then, meaning the light beam would slightly change position – and thus, the same spot wouldn’t be heating up anymore.
You’ll have to create a parabolic mirror to make a fire with a mirror. This leads us to #12…
12. Parabolas for Starting a Fire
Without getting into the complex mathematics of parabolas, a parabola is a deep concave dish. Parabolas are good at concentrating light onto a surface when made from a reflective material.
It’s pretty easy to make a parabola. You can even find one in nature (thanks a-holes who leave trash everywhere).
For example:
- The reflector in your flashlight
- Polish The bottom of a soda can with toothpaste or something similar
- A Mylar space blanket shaped into a parabola shape
Interestingly, the Olympic Flame is lit by a parabola.
The video below shows just how well it works.
Using Everyday Objects to Light a Fire
Here are some ways to make a fire without matches that are truly MacGyver-esque.
13. Battery and Gum Wrapper
One cool trick you can use is a battery to start a fire. Note that doing this will drain the battery, so don’t do this if you need the battery!
You will need a battery and something which is metal but can ignite. Steel wool is the best option, but not everyone will have it lying around. A gum wrapper also works well and is probably easier to find.
Take your steel wool (or metal gum wrapper cut into a thin strip) and touch it to both ends of the battery. A spark will form instantly and ignite the steel wool. Quickly use this to light your tinder.
If the steel wool doesn’t light right away for some reason (like your battery juice is low), you can create sparks by rubbing the steel wool on the battery ends.
It will cause current to go through the wires and heat them until they ignite.
You can also take a piece of metal, like a paperclip, and rub it against both ends of a battery simultaneously. Sparks will form and can be used to light tinder.
14. Fire Piston/Fire Syringe
A fire piston is an airtight cylinder with a plunger in it. When you push down on the plunger, it creates a considerable amount of pressure. The pressure produces heat, which can be transferred to tinder.
There are a bunch of different ways to make fire pistons at home. You don’t even need any unique materials. So, in a SHTF situation where you run out of lighter fluid, you could build yourself one of these.
Below is a video showing how to make a mini DIY fire piston. There are plenty of other ways to do it, so check out other videos and tutorials.
Also, see our picks for the best fire pistons available to buy.
15. Instant Cold Pack, Zinc Powder, Salt, and Water
Have you got an instant cold pack in your first aid kit? Then you can use it to start a fire.
Cold packs contain the chemical ammonium nitrate. When combined with zinc, salt, and water, it will ignite to make a fire.
So, where the heck do you get zinc? Yes, powdered zinc can be ordered online, but chances are you won’t have zinc laying around in a SHTF situation. Instead, you can scrape the greenish part off of a galvanized pipe.
Here are the instructions:
- Open the cold pack and remove the bag of ammonium nitrate.
- Grind up the ammonium nitrate.
- Combine ½ tsp. of ammonium nitrate with 1tsp powdered zinc and a small pinch of table salt.
- Put the mixture on a cotton ball or other tinder.
- Carefully put 1 drop of water on the mixture. Wait, and it will produce a green flame!
Disclaimer & Safety notes
- Try this at your own risk! I assume no responsibility for injuries!
- If you try this, do it outside.
- When obtaining scrapings of zinc, wear a face mask, so you don’t inhale the zinc dust.
- Wear gloves. Your sweat can ignite the powder on your hands!!!
- Once the powders are mixed, be very careful not to get them mixed. It only takes a small amount of water to ignite this.
- The mixture cannot be stored. Moisture from the air could cause it to ignite.
Using Chemistry
If you are good at chemistry, there are many ways to start a fire without matches using chemicals you can extract from household items.
However, most of these are not practical for survival situations. You’d have to be an outstanding chemist to know how to extract the chemicals and what ratios to use.
Plus, there is a risk of explosion and toxic fumes. In short, I’m listing these for educational purposes but don’t expect anyone to employ them.
If you do try them out, be cautious!!! I assume no responsibility for injuries or damages! 😀
16. Potassium Permanganate and Glycerin
Potassium permanganate (or PP) is a chemical with a surprising amount of survival uses, such as purifying water and treating wounds. So, it is a good thing to keep in your emergency supplies kit.
You can buy PP in hardware stores in the area for water softeners (since it is used to remove iron from water). Since it treats fungi and bacteria in aquariums, you can sometimes find it in pet stores.
It can also be used for starting a fire without matches.
All you need to do is pour some liquid glycerin over a bit of powdered PP. Wait a bit (it can take up to a minute for the reaction to occur), and the mixture will ignite into flames.
17. Potassium Permanganate and Battery Acid
If you don’t have glycerin to mix with PP, you can use battery acid instead. Battery acid is just diluted sulfuric acid. You can concentrate it from battery acid.
As explained here, dip a long wand into the sulfuric acid. Then (while standing as far back as possible!), use it to touch potassium permanganate crystals sprinkled on a cotton ball. It only takes a few seconds for the PP to be lit on fire.
The reaction can be violent, so be cautious if you try this.
18. Chlorine and Brake Fluid
For this to work, you generally need highly-concentrated chlorine, for example, chlorine pool tablets. When you combine the chlorine with brake fluid, it makes a huge fireball. Yes, this is explosive and should never be done indoors. You can read more on why it works here. The video below shows the reaction.
19. Sulfuric acid with Potassium Chlorate and Sugar
Here’s another super scientific way to make a fire without matches that you will probably never do in real life.
First, you’ve got to get sulfuric acid, which will probably be sourced from battery acid (see #17). Then you’ve got to get potassium chlorate, which is a bit more complicated but still possible to make at home from bleach.
Now all you have to do is:
- Mix equal amounts of potassium chlorate and sugar
- Add two drops of sulfuric acid to the mixture.
- Wait a bit, and you’ll soon see purpose flames!
Have you ever tried any of these methods? Any other ways of making a fire without matches or a lighter that I missed? Let us know in the comments!
Related: Make sure you know all the different types of lighters.