On our canoe trip today I wanted to build a small fire to cook our hotdogs over. Also wanted to experiment with using a magnifying glass to start a fire. I had experimented on some leaves years ago that I had been able to light so I thought it would be a piece of cake - wrong.

I had a roll of toilet paper in our wet bag so grabbed a piece of it to use as tinder. While the boys gathered some twigs I rolled it up & brought the light to a bright point - nothing - I kept trying for like 10 minutes. Never so much as singed it? I was stunned. I switched over to some leaves & got them to smolder, but they must have been damp as it never would burst into flames even though I kept blowing air into it. The other dad that was on the float was an Eagle scout around 20 years ago & he told me to try some Pine bark that he had just seen while he was exploring around while I was trying to light the toilet paper. He got some & it only took a couple minutes before we had a roaring fire.

Only thing I can figure out is the toilet paper was white & bounced enough of the light off of it to keep it from heating up. I'm guessing one would run into the same problem using a cotton ball & magnifier - don't know?

I was really surprised by this & thought I would toss it out there.

Please no flaming me on this guys/gals. (Pun intended)

Which river did you float? James, finley, or other?

According to Mythbusters, a white tinder doesn't work very well when trying to start a fire focused solar rays. The white color reflects too much of the energy. When they rubbed a little dirt on it it worked much better.

-Blast

Try to light a piece of paper with printing on it. You can burn off the print easily while the white will just singe around the print.

As I recall from my misspent youth, ants are dark and will easily puff a little smoke. <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

If you had a pencil on you, a little graphite might help. It could darken things up a bit, and carbon burns well if you get it hot enough.

North Fork of the White River. We put in at Blair Bridge & floated down to Dawt Mill. My 1st time on it - Pretty nice with lots of water. Water varied from 68 to 76 degrees which is a little chilly for my swimming tastes though I went anyways. It has springs adding to it all the time & each one of those was a steady 59.

I will try the pencil lead idea next time & make sure I light it on top of a ant hill. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I remember setting sheets of WHITE paper on fire all the time with a magnifing glass. Not sure what your issue was. Maybe you should have left it flat instead of rolling it into a ball.
cheers

I had a play with this the other day. The problem I had was burning too fast. The focus burned the wood to ash without it igniting. Defocusing enough to obtain a flame seems to be quite tricky.

It was kind of hazy, but still fairly bright sun. Also the other speculation that I had was that because this was a super soft variety of toilet paper that it dispersing the light as it went into it - also maybe there is a chemical that they add to it? Plus this was only a 2-3 inch magnifying glass. So many factors. I will definitely experiment some more with it as it is pretty fun even if I don't figure it out for sure.

IOW make a fire from used TP and not new TP from the roll.

years ago, we used to float from twin bridges down to the lake. 2 days worth of floating.

That water fall at Althea Springs was pretty cool where you could go under the falls. So did you port around the dam at Dawt Mill & actually go all the way into the lake? or take out at Dawt?

I don't remember if it was dawt mill or not. sometimes we took out there but usually went to the lake. We camped at campground below cloud 9 ranch (i think). We usually tried to run the dam.

Cigarette tobaco works real well. Our friends in the tobacco industry put plenty of chemicals in them to help them smolder without going up in flames. make a small pile, use glass to light, cover with additional tobacco and blow lightly. You'll get a nice little ember that can be used to light other tinder.

I ran into the same problem while attempting to light Cotton Balls. I didn't have any kind of fuel on it just a plain cotton ball. I was thinking along the same lines as you though and that it was white. Anything dark is easy to get an ember or similar.

Maybe use that recycled, grey-ish toilet paper??