How to Make Fire Without Matches or a Lighter

Being able to start a fire is an essential tool for surviving in the wilderness. When someone in your camping group drops the matches into the river or the lighter gets lost along the way, you may need to know how to start a fire using natural or household objects to create friction or magnify the sun. Learn how to start a fire without using matches or a lighter by reading the methods below.

Getting Started

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Learn how to make tinder for a fire and have your tinder nest ready. For all of the methods below, you will need a tinder nest to nurture the sparks and/or embers you create into a flame.

Gather dry wood. In order to create friction and maintain a flame, you will need to use dry wood, as best as you can get.
Dry wood hiding places. If the area is damp, you may have to check the interior of logs, under ledges, and other places that are protected from wetness.
Know your trees. Not all wood ignites equally. Depending on your locality, some particular trees start fires more readily. For instance, paper birch yields paper-like bark that, even when wet, often makes an excellent tinder.
Look beyond wood. Although fire-building is usually taught in the spirit of building a fire in the wilderness, you may have to adapt. In an urban situation there may be no trees, so you may have to look at things like old books, wooden pallets, furniture, and the like to get a fire started.

Using Batteries and Steel Wool

Make a tinder nest out of any dry plant material that easily catches fire. You can use dry grass, leaves, small sticks, and bark. This nest will be used to create a flame out of the spark you create with the battery and steel wool.

Find a battery and locate the battery terminals. The terminals are the two circular receiving prongs located on the top of the battery.
Any battery voltage will work, but 9-volt batteries will ignite the quickest.

Take your steel wool and rub it on the battery terminals. The finer the steel wool, the better for this process.

Continue to create friction by rubbing the steel wool on the batteries. This process works by creating a current through the tiny steel wires that then heat up and ignite.
Another way to do this is to take a 9-volt battery and a metal paperclip and rub the paperclip on both battery terminals at the same time to create sparks. This is similar to how the wires in light bulbs and toasters ovens operate.

Blow gently on the steel wool as it starts to glow. This helps nurture the flame and encourages it to spread.

Once the steel wool is glowing brightly, transfer the steel wool to your tinder nest quickly, continuing to blow lightly on the nest until the tinder ignites, creating a flame.

Add increasingly larger pieces of dry wood to build your fire once the tinder nest has ignited into a flame and enjoy your fire!