Manny: No matter how many spare batteries or candles you pack, eventually you might run out. But you can still make light, as long as you have a can of sardines in oil and a twig. I’m pretty sure you can find that. I’ll show you what to do with it.
To use a twig as a wick, you wanna get one that’s still green, because it needs to be fibrous. You don’t want one that’s gonna snap. This is bald cypress. I’m gonna get one out of oak. That one’s green. We’ll see how these work. Let’s go in and try it.
This is just a cotton string. So if you have that in your kit, you’re in a good shape. You can take this and make a wick out of it. Okay but what do you do, if you don’t have a wick? Well, you’ve got several options. You can use a twig. Here I have a piece of bald cypress twig and a piece of oak, which I haven’t tried. You’re gonna see me trying oak for the first time.
Another thing you can do is cut off a few strips from your shima, because you always have a cotton shima in your bag, right. Start about an inch and a half away from the end. You wanna have a rectangular piece that’s not cut and then you’re gonna cut three strips.
Now you’re gonna cut just a strip right here. A slit right about there. What I wanna do is just stick this piece of bamboo in here tight. If you’re outside and you can find a tree, then wrap it around a twig like this. Might be easier to do this than it would be to find the end and work it over the end. And now I’m just gonna braid it. I’m looking for a fairly tight, dense braid. And of course the thinner the strips you start with, the smaller the wick. The smaller the wick, the slower your oil will burn off. If you make your wick too large or too long, it’s going to burn extra oil of course, and it’s also gonna smoke.
Let’s prepare the twig wick. Roll it. A twig is essentially a wick. It draws nutrients up out of the ground, and water, to the leaves and transports nutrients from the leaves to the rest of the tree. I mean, it’s just a… it’s a transportation system for liquids. Alright, let’s try it with some oak, which I haven’t done before. I don’t know how this is gonna turn out, but… By the time I get it soft enough, it’s kind of shredding. So, I don’t know how that’s gonna work. We’ll see.
When I’m done burning the oil out of this, I’m gonna eat the sardines. So, I don’t want to turn the reamer the way it’s normally used to ream, because I don’t want to get metal shavings in my sardines. So, I’m just gonna poke the hole, and then if I need to expand it, I’ll turn it the other way, so it doesn’t cut any metal shavings. That should be good enough for the cotton string.
We’ll go ahead and soak the wick. I’m gonna go ahead and trim it. See, I don’t think this oak is gonna work so well, because when I pounded it, it just came apart into these strands. So, I’m gonna try taking off the bark end and poke it in there. Alright. Well, that’s kind of a mess, but… Cotton string, cotton sheet. That’s the bald cypress. And here’s the oak. See that cotton sheet, a little too thick, so it burns off with a lot of smoke. I think that bald cypress wick can do better.
So, I’ve blown them out, I’m gonna work on the bald cypress wick a little longer. Try to make a better one. I’m just making one from the thick end of the twig. See if that helps. I like it to be good and soft.
I love this job. So, the trick here is to get that wick really soft. You have to pound it until it’s just really flexible. More like cloth and then it wicks better. The total amount of oil in the can will probably last two hours, maybe three, if you’ve got a smaller wick like this cotton. Generally the smaller the better. Burns slower. Puts out about the same amount of light. This is the cotton string, this is the cotton sheet, braided. And that is the bald cypress twig.
There, just an idea for how you can get some light, if you have no other option and don’t mind putting a little work into it. You can go out and get a twig. And as long as you have a can of sardines or tuna in oil, would work fine as well.
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