Rope Lighter, learned something

swedishdwarf said:
Is the ember big enough for it to be an effective cigarette lighter?
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Yes. With the Japanese Windmill Rope Lighter I can engage the entire top of the rope, about the diameter of a cigarette, in a red/orange ember. Lighting a cigarette is the main function of the Rope Lighters as far as I can tell.

oregon
 
Hey Guys..

Oregon...

I ordered one of these last night with a couple of extra ropes...

The ember on the rope can easily be used with a coal extender and then used in a tinder bundle..

This may turn out to be a very interesting and unique way to get a fire going...

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
Normark said:
Hey Guys..

Oregon...

I ordered one of these last night with a couple of extra ropes...

The ember on the rope can easily be used with a coal extender and then used in a tinder bundle..

This may turn out to be a very interesting and unique way to get a fire going...

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
Click to expand...


Smart getting the extra ropes.

Coal extender? Do you have a pic or are you talking about anything that will smolder and is handy?

You know what they say, "where there's smoke there's fire." The Rope Lighter is a firestarter for sure just as long as you have tender.

Let us know how you find the Windmill Rope Lighter. I am interested in your opinion of it.

oregon
 
Hey Oregon...

You've pretty much got it..
A coal extender is anything that will extend the coal that you already have..
Can be a number of things...

Tinder fungus, punk wood, char cloth, the dark/black dust from a fire bow/drill..

Simply transfer the coal from the smoldering rope to some other tinder and drop that into your tinder bundle.. Igniting a piece of char cloth off the burning rope in your picture would be VERY easy to do..

As long as the rope lighter ignites the rope quickly and effectively I can see this being a very easy way to get a fire rolling....

How easily will the rope ignite ???

I grabbed a couple of replacement ropes just so I don't have to search for any right now,, however I would imagine there are many different types of cotton type ropes that could be used for this lighter...

I will for sure let you know what I think about it...

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
oregon said:
Does really function as a low light soldiers friend? It seems to me that throwing sparks would be enough to give away your position and target you for incoming. I wonder if this low light business was just a marketing tool without merit.
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"All Quiet on the Western Front" was a historical novel presumably written by a German veteran of WWI. In it he talks about how some of the American troops were very fond of their tobacco. He never mentioned a flame or spark from the lighter, but said it was easy to pick out the glow from just the burning cigarette to aim at.
 
When I was enlisted there was a quick and easy fix for nicotine fits during noise and light discipline. Don your poncho, tuck your head down into it, and you were good to go.

Gautier
 
Normark said:
Hey Oregon...

As long as the rope lighter ignites the rope quickly and effectively I can see this being a very easy way to get a fire rolling....

How easily will the rope ignite ???

I
Click to expand...

I just grabbed my Windmill Rope Lighter, the one with the pre-char rope tip, and got an ember on the second spin of the striker wheel. To engage the entire end of the rope I fan the striker wheel with the palm of my hand 1/2 dozen times in quick succession. This action embers up the face of the rope toward the striker wheel. I then blow on the ember to send it thru the entire top of the rope. Now my office smells like someone is roasting their whites.

Thank you kindly for the lucid explanation of relaying the ember to the tinder.

All the best,

oregon
 
the possum said:
"All Quiet on the Western Front" was a historical novel presumably written by a German veteran of WWI. In it he talks about how some of the American troops were very fond of their tobacco. He never mentioned a flame or spark from the lighter, but said it was easy to pick out the glow from just the burning cigarette to aim at.
Click to expand...

Ouch! A soldier could have placed lit cigs around in order to locate the muzzle flash so they could return fire. The "red herring" scenario.

oregon
 
The rope makes a real difference. Pictured, is a rope that came with the antique Bower's Army Navy. Spray some sparks on the pre-charred rope and the ember catches and quickly spreads across the entire top end of the rope without any help from blowing on it. This rope ignites and embers much more easily than the ropes that came with the Japanese Windmill rope lighter.

P1000759.jpg


oregon
 
straitshot said:
Great! I've got to check into this. Feds and the airlines do not allow any type of lighter except Zippo types and no extra fluid.
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Now they are allowing many other types, announced a day or two ago. It seems that disposing of the, ah, disposables that were confiscated was costing $4 million a year!
 
BlackPaladin said:
Now they are allowing many other types, announced a day or two ago. It seems that disposing of the, ah, disposables that were confiscated was costing $4 million a year!
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$4 million!!!

I am shocked:eek:

I figured that folks bot them for resale. I've seen airline confiscations, knives to lighters, being sold on the popular auction site for years. My assumption was that the feds made money since they did not have to pay for their inventory. The govt. can't be that poor @ business can they?

oregon
 
BlackPaladin said:
It seems that disposing of the, ah, disposables that were confiscated was costing $4 million a year!
Click to expand...

Why wouldn't they just buy rolls of tickets ( like rides at the fair ) and give one out for each confiscated lighter , and then take the bin of lighters across the isle and let folks getting off the planes ,redeem the tickets for the ones in the bin ?? :thumbup:

Oh, I forgot who we are dealing with ( beurocracy :jerkit: )
I retract that simple , common sense idea.
:foot:

Phil
 
Have anyone tried to "drop" it in to the water? Does it work after it get wet?? Beause it would s*** if it does not work after you come out from the water and try to sart a fire.
 
darkhawk424 said:
Have anyone tried to "drop" it in to the water? Does it work after it get wet?? Beause it would s*** if it does not work after you come out from the water and try to sart a fire.
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The rope lighter uses rope as tinder. All it does is to put sparks on rope tinder. Wet tinder won't ignite. There is nothing waterproof about it.

Now if you put it into a ziplock baggy...

oregon
 
Wow. I've had one of these (same as the one pictured above) for a long time. I had no idea what it was untill I saw a post about them on here a while back. Then once I knew what it was, I still couldn't get it to work until I saw this thread about charing it first. It works really nicely for what it is. Mine has a orange rope in it and it seems to work well. Deffinately not waterproof, but still neat.
 
Siggyhk said:
Wow. I've had one of these (same as the one pictured above) for a long time. I had no idea what it was untill I saw a post about them on here a while back. Then once I knew what it was, I still couldn't get it to work until I saw this thread about charing it first. It works really nicely for what it is. Mine has a orange rope in it and it seems to work well. Deffinately not waterproof, but still neat.
Click to expand...

Terrific. I am pleased that you got something useful from the thread. To get more sparks I sometimes put more than one flint into the flint channel of a lighter. I also tilt the end of the rope over towards the flint wheel to get it as close as possible.

I wonder how soldiers kept them dry enough to light? There must be somebody still alive that saw these used or used one themselves. However, I've never seen anything about their use in wet weather. What if you put scotchguard on the cotton rope? Would it still burn?

oregon
 
oregon said:
I wonder how soldiers kept them dry enough to light? There must be somebody still alive that saw these used or used one themselves. However, I've never seen anything about their use in wet weather. What if you put scotchguard on the cotton rope? Would it still burn?

oregon
Click to expand...

my Father gave me a couple of the original rope lighters and told me that solders would use a .30 cal shell case to make a fuel lighter. they would carry a long piece of wire to dip the whole thing in to a fuel tank. That was the solution to being wet, they were always wet.
 
Hey Guys....

Well got my Windmill Rope Lighter today in from Japan...

Initial impressions were good..

Lighter is built well and solid....

I had a glowing ember almost out of the package...

The finish on the lighter seems to be hard chrome or nickle plated.

The initial burn was a little spotty and uneven, however I fixed that soon after..

When I was retracting the rope, I pulled the little stopper out...
One thing I didn't like from the get go is the way the stopper was attached to the rope..
I actually debated taking it off and putting it the top drawer of my desk...

If the stopper is left the way it is, it will be surely lost..

So I came up with an alternative...

Attached to the stopper is a small delicate looking gold chain. On the other end of the gold chain is a teeny tiny little cotter pin. The cotter pin is simply pushed into the rope.

To solve possible lose, I pushed the cotter pin through the rope, and opened it up, then folded it back around the rope. Short of the chain breaking (which is a possibility) the stopper is secured to the rope....

Getting the rope back into the tube of the lighter is also difficult at first...
After trying to stuff the rope in, the inner strands got all messed up and were different lengths. The outer sheathing of the rope made from cotton string bunches up easily and snags going back into the tube...
To solve this I snipped about 1/4" off the end so everything was straight..
I flattened the rope, folded it in half and it went in smoothly..

Another pretty slick thing I came up with to solve this problem and the stopper getting lost is to remove the cotton outer strands, and tightly wrap the remaining 8 strands of cotton string in very thin copper wire.

Close to the top, the stopper chain could be added to the remaining wraps of copper wire thus eliminating the small cotter pin and possible lose of the stopper.

The copper wire would also tightly hold the 8 strands of cotton string together nicely, giving a nice ember at the top. The excess copper wire is simply snipped or broken off as it is used. You would start wrapping the strands from the bottom up.

Within an hour of playing with the rope lighter I burned through the OEM flint and had to run out to my tool box for some extras.. I found that the spring tube held two flints back to back, and although it was a little hard getting back in,, it did in fact fit...

I was impressed to find in the cap of the spring holder, there was a spare flint( much in the same way a mini mag holds it's spare bulb), waiting and ready for service...So the flint holder will hold 3 flints in total.

All in all it is a pretty cool little device, I'm not disappointed in buying it, and yet another way to get a decent ember to tranfer to other tinder for fire lighting...

Other than that a pretty unique way of lighting up your favorite smoke.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have..

Oregon, Thanks for turning me on to this..

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
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