I came across this neat Instructables article for making a pocket sized oil lantern and I wanted to make one for myself. Aside from being somewhat of a bastardized kudlik, it doesn’t really fall into the bushcraft or stone tools categories, so I’ve added a new one for self reliance; hopefully with additional articles to follow in the future. Anyway, the construction process was straight forward and simple enough that I won’t describe any of the details involved in making it because that was already done in the article. The lamp’s versatility, small size and ease of portability gives it some potential camping and bushcraft applications and it may be worth taking one along next time out.

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Here I go, playing with fire again!  This is something I saw Ray Mears demonstrate in his Bushcraft video series.  It is a neat concept that requires a dry and seasoned log.  In the Bushcraft episode, Ray uses pine.  I didn’t have pine available but I did have some knotty spruce from a tree that was felled from the yard this spring.  It wasn’t as seasoned as well as it should have been, making it more difficult to ignite, but once it got started it burned nicely.  I used a chainsaw to make the cuts.  In the video, Ray explained that the cuts could also be made with a hand saw or the log could be split into quarters and the ends buried in the ground vertically.  The splitting method seems easiest of the two alternatives and when I do this again, I’ll try it that way for comparison.  One mistake I made was packing the cuts way too tightly with sticks which impeded the oxygen flow thus adding further difficulty to the ignition process.  As you can see by the photos, the wind was wreaking havoc on the distribution of heat and flame.  Even with the wind conditions as they were, I was able to get the uncovered pot to a boil, but not to a rapid, rolling boil.  I suspect that under more ideal circumstances (i.e., no wind, properly seasoned wood, and perhaps a lid for the pot) the water would have reached a rolling boil.  We’ll have to see what happens the next time I try the Fire Log out.

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Playing with fire is always fun.  Today I experimented with torches.  I wanted to try out different fuel types and ended up using pine pitch and tallow.  I had a bunch of pitch left over from previous projects.  I also got a bunch of fat that I rendered into tallow from the woodchuck I “sampled” a few weeks ago and used for torch fuel.  For the torches, I used the seed head from the cattail stalk and the same with common mullein stalks.  I made 4 torches total: 2 cattail torches – 1 with tallow and 1 with pitch, and 2 mullein torches – also with pine and tallow.

The tallow, when warmed, easily absorbed into the cattail fluff and I assumed that the cattail would act like a wick in a candle and burn.  Boy, was I disppointed.  I couldn’t get the cattail with either fuel type to light easily and when they did, they immediately went out when removed from the heat.  The mullein, on the other hand, worked well.  But, again, I was disappointed, this time with the quality of burn.  Both mullein stalks (with tallow and pine pitch) burned, but not like I am used to seeing on TV – with a large flame throwing out loads of light.  They burned more like over-sized candles.  Both fuel types had a tendency to drip (pine) or run (tallow) down the stalks while burning.  And both burned down in about 20 minutes.  Not too bad a burn time, I’d say.  Lastly, the tallow torch didn’t smell all that great and lingered on the clothes.  The pine pitch, on the other hand, had a nice piney smell to it.

So, in closing, I wouldn’t want to use either of these by holding in my bare hand and walking through the woods.  But they could be practically used around camp to supplement the light from the campfire if poked into the ground in a convenient location.  Still, I’d like to experiment some more with different torch methods and compare the results.

What kind of results have you had with torches?  Please share your experiences.

UPDATE: During my first attempt with torches, I used common cattail (Typha latifolia) and I couldn’t get that to light.  Today, however, I did have some success using narrow-leaved cattail (T. angustifolia).  I soaked seed head in warm tallow and it burned for about 15 minutes or so.  I don’t know what the difference was, perhaps the smaller size of the heads, but it seems that the narrow-leaved cattail will work for a torch/candle.

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