some daydreaming for a hot summer day

It is approximately hot in New Jersey today.  A few years ago I wrote about trying the trick of starting a fire in the Winter with ice.

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Years ago I was snowed in on a beautiful sunny day and it struck me that this might be possible.

You need very clear ice.  I had a bucket that had been collecting snow melt the day before and the night was cold enough to freeze it nicely and clearly. About half the ice was very clear and the rest cloudy.  I had a piece of metal to use as a chisel and a little hand saw.  The hand saw was the most effective -  I carved a small cylinder and then worked on making it into a rough sphere.  Then polish it like you were making a snowball.  My gloves were just abrasive enough to do a really nice job on this.  

My aim was a snowball size as that would be easy to polish -- it came out a little small, but it worked well.  There are probably better techniques than mine, but I think a spherical lens is going to be the easiest to fabricate

The focal length for a spherical lens is short, which makes aiming it very easy.

I had tried a few designs that looked more like conventional one sided convex lenses, but they were too difficult for me to make.  The total trial and error phase took several hours and well over a quart of hot chocolate and a steaming bowl of chili.  Once the aha moment hit and I settled on the spherical design, it  only took 10 minutes - but my ice carving skills were pretty good by then.

 

Comments

[Gregg Vesonder]

awesome Steve. How long would it take if you tried again. Also include the chills recipe!