How to Start a Fire with a Magnifying Glass

Sooo, I just created my first fire with a magnifying glass and I am frickin pumped. It took me about an hour to light the first fire but that was due to damp ground and tinder that didn't work very well. My best advice to you on how to start a fire with a magnifying glass is to THINK LIKE A KID. If you think like an adult then you will be screwed, you will get smoke and no fire.

How to Start a Fire with a Magnifying Glass

First, I attempted to light a cotton ball on fire, nothing. Then I moved on to dryer lint. I succeeded in melting a giant glob of drier lint but no fire. Maybe it is a sign that there is too much polyester in my wardrobe. Then I tried a ball of dry tumbleweed but it was too fluffy and I couldn't get a fire. I had tried everything I could think of and things that were fluffy or condensed were all failures. I was hot sweaty, stung by a sweat bee, and generally ready to take the magnifier out of my kit.

I thought back to when I was a kid when I set everything on fire from ants to newspaper. And Bingo. I had my answer. I got up looked around my area. There were a few resources I hadn't tried yet. I found a smashed coke can and a roll of sun-baked newspaper. So I rolled the newspaper up into a (fluffy) ball and left a little dimple in the center to aim the beam of light and put it inside another tumbleweed tinder-ball. Sure enough, I had a little fireball in less than 30 seconds.

The things I took away from this experiment (accidentally) were that putting your tinder on metal helped increase the temperature and the flash point. And that paper/newsprint is probably the best source of tinder for fire by glass. Unless you have rolled up cedar bark like in this Dave Canterbury video that I will post below. My method works a heck of a lot better than Dave's though as long you can find an empty beer can (easy peasy lemon squeezy) in the woods and dry paper. This will probably be the only thing I ever do better than Dave lol.

My other tip for making a fire with a magnifying glass is the one everyone knows. The sun is strongest when it is highest in the sky from Noon to 2pm (in the Midwest at least). So if you want a fire in under a minute that is the best time to use this method.

The real conundrum raised from this experiment is do I swap out my @$$wipe for newspaper as my kit is too heavy as it is. I am going to try and light some toilet paper on fire with a magnifying glass and see how that works. I have to practice my fire-craft when my wife goes to her mothers or she yells at me lol.

And before any of you yell at me for what looks like unsafe fire practices in that video. The ground was super damp and I poured more water onto my fire site for good measure. There is zero chance of a forest fire where I live right now lol. It is like a swamp out there.

Okay here is that Dave Canterbury video that I promised you. His whole fire school playlist is bangarang. Thanks for reading.

Solar Ignition 

After watching the video, I forgot that you can ignite char cloth with solar ignition so I probably wont add much newspaper to my kit. I will probably just char up some cotton balls and cattail and go with that. I didn't edit my post because I want to share my mistakes with you. I am not trying to come off as a survival expert. I am just a student (idiot) getting ready for an epic (or deadly) adventure and just want to share my journey with you. But if you see any dried up paper in the woods and like using a magnifying glass to start fires, I'd pick it up and keep it as a tinder resource. Because it is a lot faster than Dave's method. 30 seconds with a strong sun instead of blowing on a birds nest will save you a few calories.

The video should just continue on to the next part but if it doesn't let me know and I will post the second video. And if you have any tips or suggestions on how to better start a fire with a magnifying glass, I know we would all love to hear them.