Sometimes Husband and I have what we like to call, Weapons Wednesday.The activities we participate in can vary. On one occasion I learned about using a knife. On another, I learned a few self-defense moves on how to avoid/escape someone attaching from the front. One time I learned how to safely push my own car. You get the idea.
This Weapons Wednesday was learning about torches. How to make them and just experience a torch.
I asked Husband, did you learn about this in Boy Scouts? He looked at me funny and said no, I just like fire. Fair enough man, fair enough.
With just a little hesitation, we went downstairs to start our task.
Step one was to gather all of the supplies, socks, fuel, sticks, and some wire.
The next step was to roll up the socks, using the wire to securely attach the socks to the end of the sticks. Is there an exact reason for these steps? Honestly, probably. Do I know the reasons? Nope.Once they were secure we took our fun outside. In this step, we carefully added the fuel. The fuel we used was lighter fluid, like the kind that would be added to charcoal before starting your gril. We slowly added the fluid to the socks and watching them absorb all the liquid. We didn't over saturate it so that they would drip because we were outside an there were many dry leaves on the ground. We wanted to learn about torches not how to put out fires.
Please note, we did do this right next to a garden hose so we were prepared.
Once both the socks were filled with liquid we lighted them.
Wow, they were bright, they were warm, and boy did they look cool!
When you moved them around they sounded so awesome. Sort of like a whooshing sound. They actually produced more light than I thought they would. If you waved them fast enough you could get little puffs of fire to jump off of them.
Husband explained that if I held the torch more to the side I could see better than if it is was out front because it didn't cause my vision to get so distorted.
The sticks themselves didn't catch fire because the fire was just consuming all of the lighter fluid. Husband said that the sock was just acting like a wick. As the fire burned it just pulled out more of the fluid.
Did the sock eventually burn? Oh yes. Did the fire eventually get dim? For sure. Did our sicks get a little blackened? Yup. Did the part the socks covered stay get burnt? Nope!While I was waving around my torch burning spider webs and just wandering around under my porch I thought about all of the movies where people use torches. Indiana Jones and The Mummy came to mind first. Their torches were way bigger but still, they did the same thing. I have to give people from the past credit they sure were clever and very ingenious.
Our fun lasted about 20 minutes and I would say of that 20 minutes the first 10 were for sure super bright and the flames were huge. In the end you could still see things but it would have defiantly caused some alarm and worry if you were in the middle of a dark cave or temple.
Has anyone else built a torch before? If so, what did you use for fuel? How long did yours last? Let me know with a comment below!
