Fire Pistons?

Osayo guys...
Who makes the best fire pistons?

I really don't know. :idunno: When I bought mine, I googled "Fire Piston", and looked a couple of sites. I was looking for a model that would allow me to Show other interested people HOW IT works, and bought the one made of Lucite, for that purpose.

If I were buying a Fire Piston for serious use, It would be made of wood, or antler- as traditional materials as were used to make them back in the early 19th century. Since we don't have a historical record of the fire piston being used earlier than that, when it was patented in France( 1807), I don't know how to go about choosing some other material to make the cylinder. :surrender: :hmm: :hatsoff: You should recall that the invention of the strike-a light match came about very shortly afterwards, and it was this low cost match that pushed the Fire piston aside for starting fires. The "Stick Match" was just so much easier to use. :hmm: :shocked2: :thumbsup:

Paul, My father was in the Philipines during WWI. He told ma about the natives using the fire pistons.
I might as well tell how I make my Char cloth. I use an old musket cap tin and like Paul fill it tight with old Levis pieces. The older more worn the better. I have found that the musket tin will just fit my Lee electric lead melting pot. I just float the tin (no hole as the lid leaks just enough)on the hot lead till no more smoke. Flip the tin over several times to distribute the heat.
I know it's not very PC,but casting bullets with this pot isn't either. Sometimes I need to do both when I can't make a fire in the yard(local regs.). Just another way to do it. Remember Smokey says "Only you can prevent forest fires".

YouTube has a couple of videos showing them in action and also how to construct them.

Thanks guys,
Its later than my area of interest, But a cool idea.

Caveat emptor- I was reading on a couple of wilderness survival blogs that some of the fire pistons now being sold just don't work.

Yes, I can see that happening.
Got to get a good one for sure.

check the back issues of Backwoodsman. They had an article on making one out of a copper plumbing stub. I made it and it works great. Plumbing stub, piece of dowel, a rubber O ring and I added a drawer pull as a knob on the end of the dowel. Total investment.....maybe $10 but that gave me enough dowel to make a bunch more. I found holding the copper stub and smacking the knob on a hard surface works best.

I have looked at some of the fire pistons on websites that offer them but I don't see where they are worth the price that they are asking for them.

I have made several fire pistons on my lathe. I have made them of several different hard woods. I have made pistons using string as a seal and an O ring as a seal. So far none have worked. :cursing: I have read articles and watched U Tube to try to figure out where I am going wrong. Nothing. :idunno: I manage to get a very good seal on the piston and I give it a good whack but nothing. I know I am getting a good seal because I can feel the air compress under the piston and I get a nice "pop!" when I withdraw the piston. Enough people say that they have made them work that I beleive they will......if everything is right. I just don't know what "right" is yet. :hmm:

One of our Forum members said that he made one out of copper pipe and a dowel rod with an O ring for a seal. That one could have a good enough seal to actually work but I want something a little more PC than copper pipe, dowel rod and a drawer pull. Not that there is anything wrong with that functionally, I just want somethign that looks more like something from the period. Perhaps if I drill out a piece of wood with a hole large enough to hide the copper pipe so it is not apparent, I might be able to use his technique and yet have it look more like I want it to. Hmmmm :hmm: worth a thought.

One of my friends has a wooden one & it works very well, just one *pop* & you have a glowing piece of char-cloth.
He originally had problems in 2 areas.
Firstly the charcloth has to be tightly wadded into the hole in the end. If the cloth is brittle or "dusty" from over cooking this can't be done well enough.

Secondly the actual "breech" is a much smaller diameter than the "piston chamber", supposedly this increases the effectiveness of the piston's ability to deisel when being "triggered". It does add steps to the manufacture (cutting a seperate "business end" & attaching it to the "bore") but it seems to be worth the trouble.

I hope this might help in your project.

Bill: My fire piston, made from Lucite, may suggest the fix to your problem. I have drilled lots of holes in lucite, and you can't see Thru, or into the hole when its Just drilled. My lucite FP is clear enough that you can see the ember at the end of the piston through the side wall of the FP.

I believe the maker is using a reamer to polish the walls of the cylinder, to increase the amount of chamber pressure as the piston is shoved down the cylinder with a sharp blow. Otherwise, I can't excplain how it is that you can see right through the cylinder wall.

MY FP has an o-ring around a plastic shaft, with a hollow in the end in which to put fire tinder, or charred cloth. I am not sure that it would not work even better with Two O-rings around the shaft- spaced only a short distance apart.
The more you seal the end of the piston to keep air from escaping around the piston shaft, the easier it is to raise the temperature high enough to ignite your tinder.

I have seen a piston with braided string wrapped around the shaft in a shallow groove, to keep the string from moving, and it worked, too. The guy who had it said he put Vasoline on the string to improve the "seal".

What I can see happening if any kind of thick grease is used, is that the pores of the wood FP will be filled with the grease, and allow much less air to escape around the pistons. I don't know how much help putting grease on string would be, but it can't hurt. :hatsoff:

My wooden FP uses the string as paul describes. The maker recomended I lubricate the string every so often with vaseline to keep the seal and added that the string will need replacing after some time.
We use ground Fire Tinder Fungas, the Horse hoof stuff, in the small cup in the piston.
He actually gives some with the piston and he mixes newspaper pulp 50/50 with the tinder powder.
He just makes a thick slurry of pulp paper, mixes the tinder and lay's it out in a thin layer to dry.

Can anyone post a picture of one of these contraptions, please?

The one on the left I made from walnut, right one I bought, not sure of the wood type. Tinder fungus seems to work better than char cloth for me :idunno:

modern fire starter added for size comparison

Thanks for the pics. How do these work, by friction?

Nope, like a diesel engine.
The rod fit's snuggly and air tight in the hole, that's what the string or o-ring and lube is about,
a quick smack downward on the rod and the air is compressed creating enough heat to ignite the char in the tip of the rod.

Yeppers! That is why its called a

F-I-R-E P-I-S-T-O-N . Its creates the heat by

COMPRESSION. :thumbsup:

Thank you all for your input on this.
I am just kind of interested in the concept. I dont believe the FP is PC in ANY context except maybe modern day in North America no matter what its made of. Wood just looks cooler. But functionally Copper tubing works just as well right?
Perhaps the trouble with some of them is the shape and size of the very bottom of the compression chamber. Might really make a differance how close the piston comes to the actual bottom of the chamber. I dont know however, Just a guess. The difference between success and failure may be an extreamly tight tolerance.
Pauls Clear one might shed some light on that therory however.
Thanks again guys. :hatsoff: