Alright folks – how many of you remember burning leaves with a magnifying glass when you were kids?
I do. I thought it was the coolest thing to get just the right angle so that the suns light was concentrated onto a pinpoint spot. I would get a small pile of dry leaves, place that bright spot onto them and watch the smoke start to rise – then…..”Fire!!!”
Those were the good ole days.
Anyways – a magnifying glass can be extremely useful. Whether it is reading small print, removing a splinter, or starting a fire – a magnifying glass is an inexpensive item to have as part of a survival and preparedness system.
Sometimes cheap and simple works best.
I keep a pocket Fresnel lens in my wallet and have for a long time for fire-starting purposes. I’ve also seen a neat YT video where a guy salvaged the Fresnel lens from a rear projection tv and proceeded to light many things on fire… apparently it works wonders!
Have you ever tried to start a fire with that pocket Fresnel? Just curious, let us know how it worked for you. You might want one a bit bigger.
The magnifying glasses mentioned work great! It hard to find real glass ones nowadays, but they’re around. They don’t get scratched up as easy as the plastic ones do. But glass or plastic work great, bigger being better as usual.
Believe it or not, I (wifey) have a small mag glass on my whistle, along with a compass and a thermometer…all hooked quite nicely by lanyard on my dog’s remote control collar. We let her run in the woods & use the whistle for recall or if she’s stubborn on something, we use the remote.
Rourke-thanks for the trip back in time to our local woods where yes we had a blast using a magnifying glass and it worked well-we always put out the fire -like a good Smokey Bear follower. I have one so now I will put it in the vehicle.
Arlene