Light up a matchstick?

Asheekay said:

With precisely that thought, I had purchased the heating coil/element of a solder iron.

The cut piece (~1 cm) gets hot to the touch, but doesn't glow red with a 12v, 23A battery. It does glow a bit with the 12v 2amps power supply output though. Motorcycle battery does the job too.

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It obviously depends on the exact resistance - what voltage and wattage was the element?, and how long was the total wire length in the element?. You also try fuse wire (as it blows it would probably trigger the match?, assuming you have fuse wire in these days of MCB's).

Back in the 70's we were reopening a small club after refurbishment, so my friend and I made some flash powder (never done it before, knew nothing about it), but we got some magnesium powder, and some fire works - we broke the fireworks apart and mixed the gunpowder with the magnesium powder.

Then we placed that in a metal saucer, and ran a piece of fuse wire connected across a mains lead through the pile (which was quite large - and we never tested it, as we had no more magnesium), we placed the saucer on top of one of the 18 inch speaker cabinets, on an asbestos pad (just in case).

I also made a tape, by recording and pieces together - basically the crescendo from 2001AD, and added the explosion from Dark Side Of The Moon (with the VU's bouncing off the stops). We then played this, and my friend plugged the mains lead in as the explosion occurred.

I knew it was happening, no one else did - so I was the far side of the room, with my back to it, eyes closed, hands over my eyes, head down to my knees - and everything went bright white!!!.

Oops - perhaps a little bit too much magnesium!

So I can't complain about your incendiary desires

You need to experiment with different types of wire and different lengths.

rjenkinsgb said:

I am amazed, I just had to try it myself - but the same results with the little HV module; the sparks wrap around the match head but have no effect..

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I got into an argumet over at AAC about that. They were saying you could use a tazer type stun gun to start fires, just point it near a piece of paper and turn on the arc. I had already tried it with a very high power stun gun I have. The arc shoots right through the paper and doesn't even make it smolder or turn brown from the heat. Because there is no heat from that type of arc due to not enough current.

Bump.

Haha. So, as I mentioned in my other thread, I have acquired two 18650 batteries. One for powering the relay and the other for heating the coil.

These 18650 batteries are easily an overkill. Very, very high current (for a hobbyist like me). Whoever suggested these is a hero. They even make small pieces of pencil lead/graphite red hot!

p.s. I have still not had any fun with bursting methane balloons ...

I used to use steel wool fibers as igniters with a 6V battery. That was 50 years ago... Find the right size of steel wool, and the right length for the battery you are using, and you get a nice red hot wire until it burns up itself. It gets hot enough to ignite just about anything....

of course, a red hot wire will light a match stick