Saw an episode of Survivorman's Surviving Urban Disasters. In the flood episode, he made a makeshift torch out of stuff scrunged from an office. It looked pretty neat. He rolled up a piece of kleenix (tissue), smeared it with vaseline, and rolled it in a piece of paper from a printer. He rolled each piece up pretty tight.
Let it up and viola, a makeshift torch. Amazingly, he said it will burn for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. I will try an play with one soon. It basically is more candle than torch, but it worked.
I made a torch recently and it worked well and stayed light in pretty high wind. I took a dry branch from the back yard, split one end down about 1-2 inches. I put about 4-6 small splits in it. Wove some cotton soaked with vaseline into the splits and fluffed it up, then shoved a small piece of fatwood into the middle split.
When I was ready to light it, a spark was all it took, even in the wind. I snuffed it out after about 20 minutes. The end of the branch was a little charred but it wasn't burned through at all. I think there was still some fatwood in there too. It was pretty good. A nice flame of decent size and I suspect it would be pretty long burning too. It was made with a multi-tool and a baton. And I didn't have to worry about napalm getting on me.
I just ran out to look for the branch as I brought it back home with me, but alas, my wife threw it out. I will post pictures the next time I make one.
