![]() ![]() Seal lighter with duct tape or a piece of bicycle tube: This will slow, but not stop evaporation.Ĭheck the lighter every time before you go out. Neither of these modifications will affect lighter efficiency. Remove enough stuffing that a wick will fit. Put spare flints and wick in the fuel reservoir area: Take off the thick felt cover on the bottom, and put several flints on top. Then should you run out of lighter fluid, you just simply open up the bottom and pull out some of the cotton, not much, and place it near the flint spark wheel and PRESTO! You got fire just like a Spark-Lite Fire Starter.” “As a backup emergency fire starting system when carrying and using a Zippo lighter…remove the fiber from the bottom of it and replace it by stuffing it tightly with pure cotton. Replace the fuel reservoir stuffing: I got this comment from reader Ranger Rick Tscherne: There are a few tips that can improve your Zippo for survival use. You could put the lighted Zippo under a pile of twigs, and have enough time to dry out the tinder. One handed operation: You can light a Zippo with your weak hand, even if your other arm is broken and immobilized. ![]() A butane lighter, such as my beloved BIC minis, could be disabled by dropping them in cold water, or by getting a grain of sand in the sparker. If the lighter is sealed with a piece of bicycle tubing, it is waterproof. A Zippo can handle being stepped on, dropped or being stomped into the mud. (Here are some other liquids that can fuel a Zippo.)ĭurable design: Unlike many butane lighters, the Zippo design protects all the weaker parts. If there is an internal combustion engine somewhere around, chances are you can fuel your lighter. But cold temperatures or sand or mud could disable it.Ī Zippo can work with gasoline. Matches are unreliable.Īdd several feet of duct tape and a poptop to a standard BIC mini lighter and you have a firestarting kit. And sometimes, for reasons I never figured out, the Zippo just wouldn’t light.īut I include a Zippo with my firemaking kit and here’s why you need one:Ī Zippo works in the cold: A butane lighter is affected by altitude, and if it gets cold or wet, it may not work at all. That same fully saturated lighter dried out completely in three days in hot desert heat. After closing the top, it restored itself well enough to burn another four minutes.īut the Zippo-style lighter was wildly inconsistent in other areas. From ignition to flickering light was 32 minutes. I filled the lighter to saturation with fluid and timed it. I sealed the hinge and opening with a piece of duct tape, and left it alone for a month, and it still fired. It came out the freezer overnight and fired on the second try. When full of fluid, the Zippo worked immediately after a one-minute ice water bath. Over the next two days, the total number of lights was 974! (This is probably some indication of my social life!) My Zippo was filled to the saturation point with lighter fluid, then checked out how many fires it would make before it failed. I extensively field tested a Zippo several years ago. My experience is that a Zippo can be wildly erratic. But history doesn’t prove a Zippo should be your primary survival fire starting method. It could run on gasoline, and as long as you had a wick and spare flints, the lighter would function. Matches have never been reliable, but a Zippo usually functioned well under extreme circumstances. Many, if not most, of the service members smoked back then. The Zippo lighter was first produced in 1933, and I’m guessing the Zippo was the primary fire making method for military people during twentieth century wars. When I went squirrel hunting after school, I carried my Ruger 10/22, a three-blade Stockman pattern pocket knife and my Zippo. ![]() The straw would ball up between the frame and plow share, and when it got too big, Dad would kick the wad of straw into a furrow, and I got to light it. One of my favorite jobs was lighting bean straw when Dad was plowing. Since boys emulate their fathers, I got a Zippo as soon as I was allowed. ![]()
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