How to Start a Fire With a Soda Can

If you're camping and you loose your matches, or get lost and need to start a fire to stay warm, look in your pack and find an empty soda can and part of a chocolate bar you ate while hiking. This may not seem like much, but it's enough to save your life in a wilderness survival situation, or simply to impress your friends before you roast marshmallows.

Things You'll Need

  • Aluminum soda can
  • Chocolate
  • Sunlight
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Instructions

    • 1

      Set up your campfire. This means gathering dry kindling and firewood.

    • 2

      Gather some tinder with which to start your fire. Tinder is a flammable material, and it can be made of paper, light cloth or, in a wilderness survival scenario, very dry plant material such as grass, leaves or the head of a cattail. If you cannot find dry tinder, you can use the paper from the chocolate wrapper.

    • 3

      Polish the concave bottom of the aluminum can with the chocolate. The waxiness of the chocolate you deposit on the can will help make it more reflective. Polish until you can see a reflection in the underside of the can.

    • 4

      Hold the bottom of the can toward the sun, and place it near your tinder. The reflection from the can will focus the sun's rays about an inch from the can. Move the can closer to your tinder until the focal point is a small, bright dot on your tinder.

    • 5

      Wait until you see smoke. This may take only a few seconds in intense sunlight, or close to an hour in other cases. Be sure to keep the can and the tinder very still, so the focal point of light heats the same piece of tinder.

    • 6

      Blow on the tinder gently once it begins to smolder. This should produce a flame that you can apply to kindling to start a fire.