I agree with the consensus of this thread, too. I have tried some of the premium lighters, but I keep going back to the disposable butane lighter. You sacrifice the windproof quality, but they are smaller, weigh less, burn forever, are at least as reliable, easily sourced and dirt cheap. I have found the ones with electronic ignition light well after a dunking, so you may want to include one of those along with a flint-wheel lighter. The Cricket brand is the smallest. Bic is good. I am not crazy about the Scripto brand.<br><br>The expensive lighters that use the jet-style flame have their advantages, but gram for gram and dollar for dollar, the disposable lighter is an amazing survival tool.<br>

I'm a zippo person for primary use. I do have other options though.<br><br>Bic disposible in lunchbox.<br>flint and saw striker on keychain (courtesy of boy scouts)<br>spark lite in tin<br>strike anywhere matches soaked in linseed oil in tin<br>telescope lens in tin<br>a few .22 shells just about everywhere

You´ve made a good point here. Redundacy requires a thorough study of possible reasons for failure and dependencies. Sometimes having two identical items will be enough (if one lighter is empty it doesn´t effect an other one) sometimes it requires a different principle (like in your example with the stove).<br>One of my instructors once said: 'There isn´t such a thing like a little thing. There are only details. So take care of them.' . Well, taking care of the details saved my day more than once.

It was a fairly new stove, hardly ever used, bought the previous summer and only used in summer. Coleman Feather 442 Dual Fuel.<br><br>I pumped it up and tried to light it the way I normally would, but it simply wouldn't light. Later, after I got home, I looked at the instructions on the side of the stove and realized there was a note I hadn't seen before:<br><br>*Note: In temperatures below freezing, PREHEATING PASTE may be needed to heat generator before lighting.<br><br>I was misled by the apparent simplicity of the stove; the mechanism is pretty much identical to the "Green Suitcase" model that's been around since I was a boy. Why I would need PREHEATING PASTE in cold temperatures, I don't know. Maybe all Coleman stoves have the same caveat; I haven't had too many occasions to light them at 30 below, even in Calgary. I can only assume that it had something to do with the volatility of the fuel at low temperatures. The preheating paste would warm the fuel flow tube and raise the temperature of the fuel as it passed through. I was using standard Coleman campstove fuel.

I don't know much about lighters except from being a former pack-a-day cigarette smoker who lit a lot of cigarettes outdoors in all different weather conditions. My experience as a former consumer of many plasitc Bic lighters was that they were generally reliable and they seemed to last forever. IMHO, the cheap, redundant, plentiful choice (a couple of colorful plasitc Bics plus waterproof camping matches plus alternative fire starter) is a terrific way to go. The combined weight and bullk is nothing, you can share some if need be, and you can spend the savings on something nice for your wife (which is another survival topic altogether). <br><br>If you really want to spend the large $$$ (i.e., $15-20), buy a Blast Match or Strike Force firestarter. While both designs can be criticized, they really do make decent firestarting sparks without much effort, and I wouldn't want to be without one.

>>The expensive lighters that use the jet-style flame have their advantages, but gram for gram and dollar for dollar, the disposable lighter is an amazing survival tool.<br><br>Why not go for the best of both worlds? I bought a mini-butane torch from Radio Shack (unfortunately, I can't find it anymore - grr arrgh) which used a replaceable plastic "fuel cell". The fuel cell was essentially a disposable lighter with no flint or striking wheel. I bought two disposable lighters which were exactly the same shape (I think I got a 2-for-1 deal), tossed the fuel cell and replaced it with the lighter; it worked fine. If, for any reason, the piezo-electric starter goes bust, the "fuel cell" doubles as a disposable lighter; and for good measure, all my disposable lighters double as replacement fuel cells. :-)<br><br>The torch was about the size of a Zippo, made of bright yellow plastic.

How the Bics are made:<br><br>http://www.bicworld.com/inter_en/lighters/how_is_made/index.asp

Penrith survival equipment has one for sale at £24.

I saw that same Colibri in black with the "Eddie Bauer" logo for sale at Target for about $30.