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.