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Dear fediverse,

does anybody know of instructions on how to light an oil lamp (the kind with vegetable oil) with flint and steel, and no matches (not even the old, non self-igniting, type with sulfur)?

I've found how to light fires (lots of resources), a couple of instructions on how to light candles that aren't going to work with a lamp, articles and videos about oil lamps in general, but nothing on the combination.

I can't believe that before the invention of sulfur matches people had to light a full fire (or ask some fire to the neighbors) in order to be able to light a simple lamp…

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in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

rae
rae
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flint and steel make sparks, which have to be caught in or on something which then catches fire. Lighting a candle or lamp with flint and steel often involves lighting char cloth or very slim tinder and then using that to light the wick. Using something like a fire piston might work better than loose flint and steel.
in reply to rae

Elena ``of Valhalla''
Elena ``of Valhalla''
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oil lamps require a flame to start burning, the small ember you get from char cloth isn't enough, so you need some kind of intermediate kindling.

Most instructions show how to light a full fire, so for kindling they use big-ish bundles of dry grass, vegetable fibers etc., sulfur matches were used in recent time as a smaller alternative (and I know they were used to directly light lamps), I'm wondering if there is another relatively small alternative.

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

rae
rae
•

...which is why my answer to you was "Lighting a candle or lamp with flint and steel often involves lighting char cloth or very slim tinder and then using that to light the wick."

Having watched videos of people doing this online, I'm not seeing them using large bundles of dry grass.

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

Algot
Algot
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It is my understanding that lamps were generally used to go into a location other than the main room with its fireplace. One would use a wood taper (long, thin) to take fire from the fireplace in order to light the oil lamp so it could be light carried away.
Unknown parent

Elena ``of Valhalla''
Elena ``of Valhalla''
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There are finds of firestrikers from the roman era, although it seems that the stone-on-stone method was still used (yesterday evening I found a literary quote that was mentioning both stone-on-stone and stone-on-steel as methods to light a fire, but I can't find it again :( ); it's likely that firestrikers were more expensive and thus at first only available to the richer parts of society (iirc they started to be widespread during the middle ages).
Unknown parent

Elena ``of Valhalla''
Elena ``of Valhalla''
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I'm not that sure about fire pistons: from what I've seen they seem to also involve the same steps as flint and steel, except with the tinder being ignited by heated air instead of sparks.

I've only seen fire pistons online, but they don't seem that much faster than flint and steel, assuming that somebody is trained in using them.

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

Tarbuck Transom 🌹
Tarbuck Transom 🌹
• •

Fire is the shared blood of community. You generally would ask some lit coals of a neighbor and carry them home in a jar ("to heap coals on their head") and light your fire from that. Lanterns etc were lit from a spill, straw, or noodle (spills preferred) because bootstrapping fire suucks. But if you must:

Charcloth or char moss on top of flint, striking w/ sparks that catch and glow, place lit cloth into tinder and blow into a flame, light the lantern from that.

Hands holding a piece of flint with charcloth on top and near the exposed edge. The other hand holding a steel C about to strike. The flint will chisel off tiny slivers of steel made hot by the strike, to ignite the char and start a fire.
in reply to Tarbuck Transom 🌹

Tarbuck Transom 🌹
Tarbuck Transom 🌹
• •
This is a spill plane and the spills it produces btw. You can make them by heavily skewing a regular plane (and I have) but a dedicated tool is far easier in the long run despite the complicated angles and precise chisel work required to make one.
A spill plane next to a pile of 6 spills it produced. The plane is a block of wood 10in/25cm long with a blade barely protruding from the bottom and held in place by a wedge. The severe angle of the blade produces corkscrew shavings called spills for lighting candles or lanterns.

Tarbuck Transom 🌹 reshared this.

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