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b1k3rwaif

Member
Nov 1, 2005
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how do you start a fire with wire wool and a battery .

saw the componants in a kit and wondered if anyone know?
 
If you use a pp9 battery, the small rectangular one with clips on top, you can just push it in to the wire wool and it will burst into flame. As simple as that! :D
Some wire wool works better than others nad be really careful how you transport it for obvious reasons! :eek:
Wire wool can be used as normal tinder too btw.
 
Yup,
Just like Goose says.
Finer wire wool works with lower voltage batteries, or big batteries that are partly discharged.
I used it for a firework display many years ago, taped some wire wool around the blue touch paper, ran some speaker wire for either side of it to one side of a PP9 and when the other wire touched the other terminal - whoosh - the scouts thought I was a wizard ;)

ATB

Ogri the trog
 
Using aa batteries I would use them parrallel with opposite pole next to each other(like you put two batteries in most things), then short across one end with a coin or similar, then push the opposite end into the wire wool. That should work, it is the wire wool burning as a fuse does rather than making sparks so I would be very wary of holding the wire wool against my leg as shown on that link!
 
someone on another board said .....
I saw a teacher of out door survival (Real old guy) put steel wool in under the wood then use a Spark from one of the magnesium fire starter things with the spark strike strip down the side.


i'll try this and let you know how it went
 
both ways work. from a battery and from a spark. very useful bit of knowledge in the urban environment during the aftermath of some sort of disaster.

It is a bit unpractical for bushcraft though unless you take the batteries and wire wool, most of use take some sort of battery out with us and i know some of you carry wire wool for scrubbing you dixies but i cant stand the bloody stuff in my kit.
 

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