The wood match, icon of the Age of Flame
The wood match is an icon of the ‘Age of Flame‘ in home and hearth and of the woodcraft tradition in outdoor recreation and wilderness survival. Not so long ago families and outdoors enthusiasts relied on wood matches for daily use for cooking, heating, lighting, hygiene and more. Today, the iconic wood match is mostly replaced by technological systems; butane lighters, piezo-ignitors, natural gas pilot light systems, and electric element ignition systems. Daily dependence on wood matches is a bygone age in North America but many households and many outdoors enthusiasts keep the flame alive. Fire is in our DNA.
Striking a wood match is a sensory experience. The crackling tchesh…schessssss and sulfury blast are evocative. In the hands of woodsmen and bushcrafters disposed to contemplation, the wood match flame harkens back to campfires past, camp comradery, and memorable outdoor meals. Home-bound folks enjoy striking wood matches from time to time. Some are reminded of candle spangled birthday cakes and backyard roasted marshmallows; others, the winter warmth of a wood stove or the warm glow, aromas, and feeling of security before a fireplace fire and surrounded by flickering candles during a power outage.
Wood matches remain widely available and convenient. Many experienced outdoors enthusiasts don’t leave home without wood matches carried in a waterproof case. They are almost always with me in the outdoors–along with a small butane lighter and when I’m in far flung wilderness, a ferrocerium rod.
Boreal bushcraft guru Mors Kochanski recommends those trekking the wilds should carry extra matches in triplicate,
“Matches in a protective container should always be carried, if possible, in three places; (a) in your pants pocket, (b) in your coat and, (c) in your pack… The matches should be in waterproof containers that can be easily opened when the hands are numb.”
Basic Safe Travel and Boreal Survival Handbook. 2013. Mors Kochanski
The role of matches in basic fire-making
Most campfires are lit by match flame, I’d wager. Matches are inexpensive and readily available–we take them for granted. Basic training for fire-making begins with lighting a match. The simple match offers a huge advantage over fire-making in the past using primitive methods. Nonetheless, using matches outdoors successfully in all conditions without wasting them requires a modicum of skill, so practice is essential. Good advice and numerous cautionary tales remind us that fire-making skills are essential and matches in the wilderness are a precious resource.
Popular turn of the century author Ernest Thompson Seton, first Chief Scout, wrote the Woodcraft section for the first edition of the Boy Scout Manual, Boy Scouts of America The Official Handbook for Boys 1911. In a cautionary tale about carrying and conserving matches and about what to do if lost, storyteller Seton related an account, embellished perhaps, of getting lost while guiding settlers in search of good land along the Upper Assiniboin in 1883. A small group followed Seton out of camp to the top of a distant butte in search of a lookout, but did not make their return to camp before clouds and darkness fell. Seton used his matches to illuminate his compass in the darkness to navigate his group back to camp but with each compass check he discovered that they were tending to walk circles in the dark. Rainfall began. Still two miles away and walking through precipitous terrain in darkness, and lost, Seton found only one match left in his waterproof case,
“Any of you got matches?” “No; Left ’em all in our coats.” “Well, I have one. Shall I use it to get a new course from the compass, or shall we make a fire and stay here till morning?”
The settlers took Seton’s question as a recommendation from experience and determined they would stay till morning and use that last match to make a fire against the descending cold and rain. They gathered fuels and prepared to light the fire, but the singular value of that last match descended on the group as the dank chill of cold rain settled into their bones,
“I got out the one match. I was about to strike it when the younger of the men said: ‘Say, Seton, you are not a smoker; Jack is. Hadn’t you better give him that match?’ There was sense in this. I have never in my life smoked. Jack was an old stager and adept with matches. I handed it to him. ‘Rrrp-fizz’ — and in a minute we had fire.”
Boreal wilderness living skills and survival instructor Mors Kochanski has guided thousands of learners; youth, military and advanced adults through outdoor skills and survival evolutions. Kochanski challenges learners to practice basic skills for using matches and fire-making.
“Carrying matches is not enough. Their use must be mastered through considerable practice. There is no magical way to gain proficiency in fire lighting. There are suggested minimum standards that one might strive to achieve in the training process. Under normal circumstances one should be able to gather the necessary materials and get a fire going with flames reaching your own height in five to ten minutes time. First master your lighting skills with wooden (kitchen) matches, then paper matches, then paper matches split in half.”
Basic Safe Travel and Boreal Survival Handbook 2013
The National Outdoor Leadership School offers current outdoor skills training to thousands of learners and helped to develop the Leave No Trace ethics and skills for wilderness recreation. NOLS acknowledges that fire skills are important and low impact fire has a place in the wilderness.
“Fire building is an art, but a simple art that shouldn’t be shrouded behind too much of the rugged mountain man mystique… As an outdoorsperson, you should become comfortable with fires in case you need one in an emergency. Knowing how to build a fire may save your life in a tight situation. If you someday find yourself without shelter on a cold night, building a fire may be what saves you from hypothermia.”
Mark Harvey, The National Outdoor Leadership School’s Wilderness Guide. 1999.
Fire-making proficiency is fundamental for outdoor readiness and should not be overlooked. Modern day proficiency could be defined as consistent success in fire-making in all conditions using a wood match with a small fire-starter ignition aid. Beyond proficiency, the historical standard demonstrating mastery of fire-making is skillfully producing a one-match-fire in all conditions without fire-starter ignition aids. This traditional milestone is frequently overlooked in outdoor skills development due to complacency, under the influence of our modern marketplace of limitless fire ignition aids. The next milestone, the ultimate, is fire-making without a match flame, or any modern system for producing flame.
Fire-making without matches
We most appreciate the role of matches when we consider the demands of fire-making without them. Matches and other shortcut flame devices did not exist throughout much of the Age of Flame when families needed to make or maintain domestic fire daily. During prehistory and throughout most of the history of humankind, learning fire management, fire carry, and fire-making were part of growing up–central in family and group culture.
Force a ember. Raise a flame. Feed a fire.
Three questions suggest primitive fire-making in three stages; how will you force a spark or ember? how will you capture and raise a flame from the spark or smoldering ember? How will you feed the initial flame to obtain lasting useful fire?
The answers to these three questions are topics for additional essays because each involves detailed advanced preparations and skills necessary for five elemental steps in primitive fire-making: 1) Direct muscle energy through selected natural materials prepared to generate incendiary sparks or embers. 2) Capture a spark or ember in prepared true tinder materials producing sustained smoldering. 3) Raise open flame in smoldering tinder by nesting within very fine kindling and adding oxygen. 4) Capture the burst of flame as fine kindling flares for successful ignition of additional prepared fine and coarse kindling fuels. 5) Produce a flaming core of kindling fuels and increase the core through ignition of progressively larger kindling and coarse fuels made ready.
Making fire without matches is one of the most important milestones in outdoor skills development and one of the most overlooked. Challenge yourself, do this without benefit of any tool or assistance provided by others–independent authorship of primitive fire is an exploration of human nature and human spirit. You will come out the other side of this struggle with a new sense of self.
A brisk firm scratch of a match on a striker launches the fire-making process through the first three of five primitive fire-making steps in about one second. Matches are miraculous in their simplicity and efficiency.
Origins of the wood match
Even today, when you sit around a campfire with a group of outdoorsy friends, you may see a smoker pull a flaming twig from the fire to light another cigarette. Long before early chemical matches, twigs made flame fingertip convenient. The convenience of a flaming twig inspired efforts to improve performance. Treated wood splits or rolled paper strips were commonly used through the last century for transferring flame to tobacco products, oil lamps, wood cook stoves, and so on. These household “spills” decorated most hearths and fireplace mantles and wood stove environs. Spills made flame fingertip convenient in the household for centuries. Another early convenience favored by pioneers, “sulfur spunks,” were made as needed. Spunks are an early chemical tinder carried in “possibles bags” with flint and steel kits used to ignite them. The spunk was made by dipping the tip of a thin split of wood into molten sulfur. I think this was the immediate progenitor of the chemical match, more so than the similarly named “match” of the early matchlock firearms, a cord that smoldered continuously, used to ignite powder in the pan of these early firearms. The matchlock firearm was a ‘flash in the pan’ but the sulfur spunk evolved into the match as we know it. The friction match was inevitable following the discovery of chemically unstable, inflammable white phosphorous. The sulfur spunk with added phosphorous and oxidizer chemistries became the miraculous match we take for granted, today.
How a wood match works
Striking a wood match concentrates the kinetic energy of muscular arm motion at the tiny point of contact where the match head drags along the striker surface. Friction heat ignites the incendiary chemistry baked into the match head. The flaring match head calms as the matchstick, a piece of kindling, catches fire. The flame settles tall and wide as it travels along the wood shaft fueled by thin paraffin dip. The match stick is chemically treated to regulate the flame and to reduce smoldering after-burn in the spent match stick.
There are two important categories of modern wood matches, strike-on-box safety matches, and strike-anywhere matches. These two categories include many products; penny matches, kitchen matches, waterproof matches, storm and hurricane matches, even the extra long fireplace matches.
Safety matches and strike-anywhere matches, though very similar in appearance, function differently and use slightly different chemistries to produce ignition to get the match stick burning. Both chemistries are heat sensitive. Friction is used to provide the heat energy resulting in ignition. The specific formulations in different match heads are proprietary. A generic description of match heads’ chemistries follows:
Safety matches
Safety matches are formulated to physically separate essential ingredients necessary for ignition. The match head and the striker plate are both necessary under normal conditions of use described here. The flammable heads of safety matches are formulated using a binder to hold a fuel mixture of antimony sulfide with an oxidizer together with glass grit in a colorful coherent blob at the tip of the matchstick. For ignition, safety matches must be struck on a striker surface formulated to include red phosphorous held in a binder with glass grit. When a safety match is struck, friction heat produced by rubbing the gritty match head firmly against the gritty striker plate converts minuscule quantities of the red phosphorous in the striker to highly unstable white phosphorous that ignites spontaneously in the presence of oxygen in the air. The crackle and flare of white phosphorous ignites the match head fuel mixture, setting the match stick on fire.
Strike-anywhere matches
Modern strike-anywhere match heads are formulated to include heat-sensitive phosphorus sulfide compounds with an oxidizer held in a binder with grit. Only friction heat is needed to ignite the integrated chemistry in strike-anywhere match heads. I’ve ignited these using a fast stroke across trouser legs, iron stove tops, smooth rock surfaces, polished granite counter-tops, pine boards, thumbnail, teeth, and so on.
What type of match is best?
I carry only safety matches for outdoor recreation. I know skilled outdoors enthusiasts who carry only strike-anywhere matches.
I recommend safety matches. Strike-anywhere matches cannot be struck reliably on damp surfaces that are often inescapable in the Midwest and north country outdoors much of the year. If you carry them in damp weather and keep them dry, you must carry a striker board and keep it dry, too. It’s the same deal with safety matches and they are, well, safety matches.
I know two people who have ignited strike-anywhere matches accidentally by packing them tightly into a threaded match case and than turning the case lid firmly into closed position. Apparently the match heads rubbed against the top of the case or were twisted against each other with enough force to ignite them inside the case–minor burns ensued in both cases (pun intended).
Bradford Angier, popularly known as “Mr. Outdoors,” offered advice about carrying matches in How to Stay Alive in the Woods (1956), a canonical reference for students of wilderness living and survival for decades. Angier declared books of paper matches,
“an abomination in the bush. . . make a point of carrying the most practical matches . . . the long wooden variety.”
And, joining the chorus of experienced voices, one waterproof match case should be backed up by spares,
“scatter several watertight containers filled with matches throughout your duffel.”
Angier offered reason for caution as well,
“With any match holder, another danger to eschew is the accidental igniting of the matches within. That I once managed to accomplish also by too carelessly screwing on the unyielding cap of that same composition case . . . The sound was like that of a gun going off. It was after noticing my right hand was blackened and that the particular batch of matches was charred that I realized what happened.”
Angier’s contemporary, Calvin Rutstrum, author of The New Way of the Wilderness (1958), seems to have borrowed Angier’s phrase and one-upped him. He exclaimed,
“Always buy the best grade of wooden matches that will light anywhere. Books of matches and safety matches are an abomination in the woods.”
I disagree with Rutstrum. I don’t live in the saddle hoofing dry Western arroyos with only one free hand, and I don’t smoke, so I don’t need strike-anywhere matches in the field even under the best of circumstances. Strike-anywhere matches are handy around the house, by the fireplace or woodstove. That’s where I leave them until I need them.
For me, there really is no advantage in carrying strike-anywhere matches in the field. It may seem a benefit to be able to strike them on trousers or natural surfaces, but this practice is unreliable at best. Moisture abounds in the Midwest and north country. Coarse natural surfaces waste matches by breakage. A dry striker plate is the most reliable surface for igniting matches without wasting them. Strike-anywhere matches are of no benefit when I’m carrying a striker plate. In the outdoors, strike-anywhere matches serve best as props for over-the-top characters demonstrating swagger and aplomb in commercial advertising and cinema. Recall Clint Eastwood’s character Jed Cooper igniting a match with his thumbnail in Hang ‘Em High (1968).
The best use for strike-anywhere matches is convenience at home and long term storage for emergency use. Striker boards wear out quickly. If I need to rely on matches for daily purposes, long-term, strike-anywhere matches are my choice because I can continue using them after strikers are worn out or ruined by dampness. I have successfully dried-out damp matches, but not damp strikers.
Modern flame systems, particularly butane lighters, are dimming the once bright glow of the iconic wood match at home and in camp. Few people in North America rely on wood matches, today. Most families have a box or two stashed away, rarely used–a good idea if kept away from young children. Some young adults have never struck a wood match–not once in their lifetime! Today, even paper matches are less commonly used. Butane lighters rule the day, but the iconic wood match remains the best option for fingertip convenient flame.
Tom Bain, Outdoor Readiness