do you think you know how to survive?

[Jim Craig]

If you are Canadian, you must feel my pain. Griz, come on, man. There are guys on here that live this survival stuff and have done so for longer than you have been alive. I realize you admitted that you have a lot to learn, but it is you who should re-read your initial post. That attitude won't get you too far on this forum.
I live in the true north, and have reliable survival skills, that have stood the tests of neccessity, however, I would not presume to challenge Ron Hood, Jeff Randall, Hoodoo, or any of the many other knowledgably guys here, with survival questions, unless it was to actually learn from it. Especially with questions that are silly.

By the way, the good outdoorsman does not need to start a fire with ice. If you know what you are doing, you also know to have what you need with you all the time. Put matches and a lighter in every jacket, every pack, every vehicle, everywhere. And a knife for that matter. And if you are going ANYWHERE that there could be a remote chance of being lost, bring another box of matches, another lighter, another knife or two, some first aid stuff, a strike force/tinder kit, food, shelter, even a hatchet and globestar phone. More if possible. I know how hard a real survival situation can be and realize that, even though I have some decent bush skills, I am not Rambo. I won't eat things that'll make a billy goat puke. I want to be prepared.

Sorry if this is harsh, but I respect a lot of guys opinions here on the forums, and think you could learn quite a bit if you did some more listening and less telling.

 

[will62]

I have heard of this being done in books and in movies but never in real life. You have to have a perfectly formed piece of ice to make a lens that will focus in a tight enough spot to start a fire.

Maybe I have deformed hands but I can't see getting a piece of ice shaped correctly in my hands. I have heard of using small amount of water on a piece of glass to form a lens for firestarting but have never tried it.

waterproof matches, flint and steel, a mini Bic or magnesium bar are the way I do it.

 

[MelancholyMutt]

Originally posted by will62
You have to have a perfectly formed piece of ice to make a lens that will focus in a tight enough spot to start a fire.

I think a perfectly formed piece of Male-cow pie will work as well.

 

[Jerry Hossom]

Most of us were 17 once, but it was a long time ago and easy to forget what that was like...

Did you ever say something that was maybe just a little over the edge just so you could try to impress a really neat bunch of guys you wanted to hang with? Were you ever lonely?

On the other hand I don't suppose you live for very long in Northern BC without learning some woodcraft. I'll bet some of the people being critical here probably can't tell a spruce from a pine.

Just thought I'd offer another perspective. As I recall, 17 was a bit*h...

 

[ajrand]

O.K. I've spent 12+ hours trying to shape an ice lens accurately enough to start a fire in the last several days. The process of making clear ice is a difficult one. After several attempt at boiling and freezing, I gave up and went and spudded a 5 gallon pail of crystal clear chunks out of Spring Valley Lake.

I used a concrete block and my hands to shape 11 ice lenses. Froze my now chapped hands half to death. One of the smaller lenses, about 3.5" in diameter formed the best image. It was marginally useful as a magnifying glass, but in spite of much careful hand shaping would only focus the sun to a 0.5" spot. This felt very warm on my palm, but was not nearly focused enough to start a fire.

It is possible that with luck and a GREAT deal of trial and error you might make an adequate lens without specialized equipment from ice. In my opinion though, unless you've spent years perfecting the technique, if you have to make fire this way to survive, you had better make your peace with God, cause you'll be seeing him soon.

Seventeen does have its trials and tribulations, but what I wouldn't give to go through them again. Especially the part with Beth Henderson !

 

[baraqyal]

O.K. I've spent 12+ hours trying to shape an ice lens accurately enough to start a fire in the last several days. The process of making clear ice is a difficult one. After several attempt at boiling and freezing, I gave up and went and spudded a 5 gallon pail of crystal clear chunks out of Spring Valley Lake.

The thought occurred to me that a lot of ice sculptures are almost perfectly clear.

So, I did a little research.

Apparently, there is some kind of special method to produce clear ice. A quote from this website:

"The ice block is made laying down opposed to the canned up-right method. When the block is laying down the water is circulated creating a whirlpool, therefore stopping impurities and oxygen molecules from building up along the side. Therefore stopping white and spiking effects in the ice. At the end of the process all oxygen and impurities surface to the top opposed to the center. The top is later cut off with a bend saw and disregarded. All that is now left is crystal clear ice. Due to its extensive nurturing of changing circulating pumps and only using high quality water this ice block is 2 to 3 times more expensive than the traditional canned ice!"

(Not the best write up, but you get the idea)

I suppose you could find clear ice out in the wilderness, but it would only form under the right conditions.

AJRand, was your method similar to the other persons technique of using tinfoil to initially shape the ice?

I wonder if there is a specific dimension/shape that would be ideal.

At the University of Utah, I had a math professor that researched sea ice, and specifically, the way the ice refracted and reflected radar. From my understanding, there were a bunch of different kinds of ice. It was pretty complicated. Reminded me a bit of cats cradle and Ice-9. Apparently, the optical properties of ice vary greatly depending on the source, amount of impurities, and the age of the ice.

I'm sure there is someone who can successfully produce fire from ice obtained outdoors. But IMHO, it seems to be too dependent on weather conditions to be truly useful.

-- Rob

 

[ajrand]

On lakes that are deeply frozen the bottom part of the ice is very often crystal clear. This is the source of the ice I used to form my lenses. It was as clear as could be. If a lake freezes without being exposed to much wind or snow clear ice will also form. I have bored through ice so clear I was afraid to walk on it that turned out to be over 3 feet thick in northern MI on several occasions (a tiring task with a hand auger-whew!).

I shaped the ice by rubbing it on a rough concrete block, then attemted to smooth and perfect the shape and surface with my bare hands. The main difficulty is getting the lens shaped and surface smooth and consistent enough to accurately focus the sun to a sharp point. Even slight waviness and minor errors in lens shape degrade the focus to the point that all you get is a diffuse bright spot with no real heat to it. I tried and tried to perfect the shape and surface a little bit at a time, but by hand at least, found it to be extremely tedious. You get the shape just about right, but then when you try to smooth the surface you get it out of whack. Often a seemingly minor adjustment made things worse and after a few mistakes, it's back to the bucket for another chunk of ice.

This can be done. An ice lens of proper shape and with a finely finished surface would, carefully handled, start a fire. But to do it by hand, without a mold of some sort or some other special tool is, by my experience at least, very difficult. Someone with skill in optics could give us a formula for the proper shape. Creating the thing is a different animal. As a riddle for us who are interested in this stuff its a pretty cool idea. I suppose I might try it as a last resort if I was going to die anyway, but it would take a near miracle to succeed.

 

[Point44]

man...you have too much time on your hands...

 

[Brian Jones]

Originally posted by vikingswordsman
the sow moose has 2 skinny little dangling things that i dont know the name of.

breasts? Must be an old moose if they dangle like that...

 

[JohnnyLightOn]

Well I for one like this guy Vikingswordsman.

He's been shot down in flames (mostly) here and (completely) in the Practical Tactical forum. But he seems to have a good spirit. He's only 17, but maybe he's learned a bunch already. He lives in northern B.C.; that's a pretty good training ground. Yet so many folks have gotten down on this "Griz." Maybe you guys could enjoy and welcome him if you think he's right about things, correct him if you think he's wrong, and humor the 17 year old in him.

Just my $0.02.

You're cool in my book, Griz.

Johnny

 

[beezaur]

Does anyone know for a fact that this ice thing works?

I am skeptical that it is possible, given realistic means, to make an ice lens of the quality required to start a fire.

I don't think you can get enough enegry concentrated enough to light a fire. If someone is better at thermal calculations, please help me out. I get this:

The sun shines 1368 Watts per square meter at Earth's location. This includes light at all wavelengths, gamma to UV through visible to IR and then radio. Roughly 7 10ths of this makes it through the atmosphere, and some of it that does just reflects back into space. Say 1/3 of all energy that hits Earth (the noon-time Equatorial sun, mind you) can be used to light a fire with a lense.

So, on a generous day you have ~650 W/m^2 for torching ants or whatever. A 3" diameter lens has 0.00456 m^2 area, so can only collect 3 Watts of energy (0.00456 * 650 = 2.964).

If you concentrate this in, say, an area 3mm dia (7.069e-6 m^2), you get an intensity of half a million Watts per square meter.

But the same 3W in one square inch (=0.000645 m^2) gives an intensity of only 4500 Watts per square meter - only a few times more intense than ordinary sunlight, and about a hundred times smaller than the glass lens' intensity.

I'm open to suggestion, but I don't think it is possible. Sounds like a wives' tale or parlor trick to me.

Scott

 

[baraqyal]

Originally posted by beezaur
But the same 3W in one square inch (=0.000645 m^2) gives an intensity of only 4500 Watts per square meter - only a few times more intense than ordinary sunlight, and about a hundred times smaller than the glass lens' intensity.

How many "watts per meter" does it take to start a fire? Considering that we're using sunlight, and that a great deal of the energy will reflect off the tinder.. I'm not too sure. I would guess that the process of turning light into heat is not very efficient.

It would also depend on what kind of tinder you used.

Also, no one said that it had to be a 3" lens. The ones in the pictures from the link appear to be more in the range of 6". I can imagine that it could be even larger, if necessary.

I don't see why a lens manufactured of ice would be particularily less efficient than one made of glass or plastic. Even fairly primitive glass lens can start a fire.

I think its possible. But, I also think that it is very difficult to accomplish.

-- Rob

 

[beezaur]

I honestly don't know what kind of intensity is required to start a fire - I am guessing about half a million Watts per square meter (325 Watts per square inch, probably a more sensible unit here). You are exactly right about ice being less efficient than glass. Maybe 50 % of visible light actually makes it through. The rest gets reflected off internal and external surfaces. You are also "nail on head" about the light just reflecting off the tinder. There are lots of ways the energy gets lost.

Anyway, my lava lamp has a 40 Watt bulb. It nearly burns my fingers when I screw a new one in. The bulb is 1.75" dia, so the amount of energy flowing through the surface of the bulb at my fingertips is 4.2 Watts per square inch. It hurts, but it is a far cry from fire.

Whatever the actual numbers, if you double the lens diameter, you gather 4x as much energy. Area increases as the square of diameter.

But the same goes for the focused sunlight - double the size of the focused spot and you decrease its intensity to 1/4 of what it was.

ajrand's 3.5" lens maybe gathers about 4 Watts and puts it in 0.2 square inches, so the (very theoretical) intensity is 20 Watts per square inch. I assume it wasn't as hot as my lava lamp, so I am probably overestimating the Watts by a factor of 5 or so. These are not numbers you can hang your hat on.

You might have better luck with a foil reflector than a lens - more area, and it won't chap your hands shaping it. Or you could use a small, flat fresnel lens, the kind they sell in book stores.

One could also try very dark tinder. Charcoal will absorb about 90% of light energy hitting it; unburned wood absorbs maybe 20%.

I'm not beyond trying an ice lens if stranded, but I'm inclined to do something more time-efficient and portable, like a drill, first. We're not talking long days here, and the penalty for being wrong is severe.

Just food for thought.

Scott

 

[Bhodisatva]

Vikingswordsman are you of Scandinavian descent? I think the only reason your getting put down all the time is becuase it seems to me that your coming up with some really off the wall stuff to impress. Put what you have to offer on the table and open your mind to suggestion from elders w/ experience. Listen to Jim Craig for example.

Anyways, heres my question to separate the city boys from the woodsmen - after you caught some trout, how do you scale them in order to cook them? ha. where do you start when your skinning a whitetail, and are the front legs attatched by joints? These questions may apply to certain survival situations.

No matter what anyone says, there will always be someone out there that we can learn from - not only in survival, but in all aspects of life - keep an open mind!

 

[Point44]

Trout has small scales...they don't need scaling...just gut it and cook it...

the whitetail i'm not sure...but usually you begin the cut on the inside of the hind leg...

and they should have joints on the front legs...

 

[JimM]

Heres one for all yoo survival experts. OK, the greyhound drops you off at the port authority bus terminal and your ugly, not too bright and got no money, but you want to get laid. What ya gonna do?

Look for a troll, and tag along awhile?
Jim

 

[squeeegyman]

Originally posted by JimM
Look for a troll, and tag along awhile?
Jim

Yo JimM B serious i really wanna kno. :grumpy: Bsides ther’s neva a troll ‘round when ya need one N most of the trolls that i kno r 2 short to tag. :yawn:

 

[JimM]

That's about as serious as I could muster.....what were we talking at the beginning of this thread.....scales, hangy-down things, the ice man cometh??.....I forget....time for more popcorn.
Jim

 

[squeeegyman]

Originally posted by Jerry Hossom
Most of us were 17 once, but it was a long time ago and easy to forget what that was like...

On the other hand I don't suppose you live for very long in Northern BC without learning some woodcraft. I'll bet some of the people being critical here probably can't tell a spruce from a pine.

Just thought I'd offer another perspective. As I recall, 17 was a bit*h...

Yo Jerry i wuz 17 once, my third year in fourth grade, suct big time. Straight up.

most of yoos guyz could live on twigs, worms and snakes dat ya caught out on da Canadian tundra, i might not kno no Canadian pines and spuceses, jus pine and spruce streets in da financial district. I do kno how ta survive in da city on pizza, blunts and 40’s. it's all good. peace.

 

[Bhodisatva]

not to ruin my questions but I was kidding about scaling trout, you can just cut the head off and gut them then fry them up. You get a rib here and there but I'm not complaining. And the whitetails front legs are only connected by muscle, no bone.

It seems that we are divided on this forum as to where we are surviving - in the city or in the wilderness. I am referring to the wilderness survival part, where a knife would come in quite a bit more handy. I only live about an hour north of Detroit and I have run into a few situations where I could've used a blade. Anyways what does a knife have to do with getting money or getting laid in a big city? After all this is called BladeForums.com!