			FLAME TORCH


Subject: Re: How to make a flaming torch?
Date: 28 Dec 1996 04:16:00 GMT

Wrap your rag *very* tightly and secure with wire.  Then soak it in
melted paraffin, wax, or fat.  The first two will allow you to store
them for quite some time while it's best to use the latter pretty soon
:-)  Use a metal bar if you want to be able to reuse them.

I use a rag wrapped around a stick soaked in kerosene to start my
brushpiles (usually they're 15' high and 30' across and have had a
liberal amount of accelerant applied after having sat for a year.
I've had flames 60' high) since I don't want to be close to them when
I set them off.

Other things that make good torches are canes (you can keep adding
them to the bundle you are holding) from reeds, horsetail rush,
cattails, etc.  Also the long bark strips of shagbark hickory make
good torches along those lines.



Subject: Re: How to make a flaming torch?
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 19:56:34 -0800

What do you want to do with it.  For light to see by I think The Biker
Babe may have the the right idea.  For lighting (setting on fire) small
fuels I have used a "drip torch" for back fires and burning out my line
when I worked for the USFS.  Drip torchs are avalible from any forestry
supply or wildland fire supply house. 

The torch consists of an one gallon tank and handle holding a mix of 4
parts deisel to one part gasoline.  Connected to this tank is a
horizontal pipe about a foot long with a loop bent in it for a trap and
a ball bearing and seat for a valve. 

At the end of the pipe is a nozzle and a wick.  The wick is soaked with 
the fuel and lit, as you tip the torch downward, fuel exits the nozzle 
passing through the flame from the wick and then falls onto what you are 
tring to ignite.

They work great for ignition. dave


Subject: Re: How to make a flaming torch?
Date: 6 Jan 1997 03:54:20 GMT

Try making links or flambeaux:  Both were used for lighting in the 
American Colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Links 
are simply lengths of rope soaked in melted was (bee's wax or parafin are 
both fine). 

A flambeau is a really big candle.  Put three or four lengths of braided 
cotton rope in a coffee tin for wicks, and fill the tin with wax, parafin, 
tallow, lard, bacon grease, used motor oil, etc.

Both links and flambeaux work a heck of lot longer than rags soaked in 
gasoline, or diesel fuel, motor oil, alcohol, etc.

