Making fire with ice lens.

A

Alvin Hom

Joined
May 6, 2004
Messages
171
Okay I saw this cool site on how to start a fire using an ice lens. I'll try to post a link if I can find the site again.

Very cool.

One thing though is that they recommend boiling the water to get rid of gas bubbles in the water. So...you kinda have to have a fire going already.

But it was still cool.
 
yeah but you are supposed to use that fire to defrost your hands after screwing up the lens attempt :D
 
For what it's worth, a good friend of mine and I spent the better part of an hour on a bright sunny day trying to do this. We used every chip and chunk of a rather large piece of ice to mold variations of a convex lens to focus the light. I am sorry to report that at the end of our hour we couldn't even light a dry match head, let alone any other tinder.

If alone with only ice.....you'll probably die. :cool:
 
I have experimented with just a rgular glass lens, and even then it is very difficult around here because we simply don't get that much heavy sunlight. If it is really cold out, and you have even slight wind, it is very hard to catch even light tinder with a beam of sunlight unless it is *very* bright. The first thing I would recommend before experimenting with a water lens is to become very proficient with a glass one as even that isn't easy, depending on enviroment.

-Cliff
 
My problem with this is who has the time and energy in a survival situation to do this stuff. another thing to consider is that it is going to melt in your hand and the angle of the sun during those months is so shallow that it wpould be difficult to get a good stong ray of direct sunshine. I would rather start a fire with more reliable things including gasoline.
 
I have a nice little lens I always carry. I got it from A.G.Russell. It works fine in midday summer sun, but I'd hate to have my life depend on it, and it's one of the better lenses I've carried. (I used to light cigarets with a similar one.)

You're better off with some kind of sparker as backup to a Bic lighter. :)
 
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