Starting a fire with AA battery and gum wrapper

[Gordon Gray]

[Mitchell Ebbott]

I never carry gum, but I bet that trick would work with a hot cocoa packet. Most of those are made of a foil and paper laminate.

[Dan Yeruski]

First time seeing the gum wrapper way to do fire….thank you :-)

Another video by the same guy was in the right hand column:

[Mobile Calculator]

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[Kattt]

Looking at older threads and this one caught my eye. Pretty cool :)

[Kevin Babione]

I forwarded this YouTube video to one of my hiking buddies and he and his son (who didn’t believe it could possibly work) set out to prove it either way.  Here are his comments:

I would say that the myth is confirmed.

Things we learned.  Duracell did work better then store brand batteries.  I have concerns regarding how much strain it puts on your battery as it gets very hot.  You need to bring extra batteries if you want to feel good about powering your flashlight later at night.  The thickness of the wrapper is important (3/32’s is exact), too thick and it smokes but does not catch fire, and too thin it burns up immediately and would not start tinder.  If you fiddle with the contact points on the wrapper too much, it loses its conductive properties.  The guy in the video is much more manly than Tyler and I.  The ends of the battery get extremely hot immediately and is difficult to hold long enough to ignite.  I do believe it could actually leave light burn marks on your fingers.  I did it a few times by hand and then successfully held copper pennies on the ends as conductors instead of burning my flesh. 

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

It would probably work a lot better if they used a Samsung battery

[Jim Colten]

It would probably work a lot better if they used a Samsung battery

Good one, Jon!

Cute idea, but … who needs to start a fire in the weather conditions shown in the video?  Wants to have a fire, sure.

Let’s try it at 34F with everything wet.  I can offer my back yard as a test lab.   There are other light weight sources of ignition that many of us would be already carrying for other reasons

[Author]

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