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Old 05-19-2023, 03:37 PM   #21
RGTraynor
 
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Default Re: Wet torch

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Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post
Making thin sheet bronze with a hammer and anvil and brazing it into a box is expensive, and something like a birchbark box or a turned wooden box works just as well as long as you don't do something silly like put the tinderbox underwater. The 'Altoids tin tinderbox or charcloth tin' is something I hear about in very recent times when homogeneous springy sheet metal cost ~nothing.
Mm, but now you're changing the goalposts. Throwing out a dare to find a metal tinderbox predating the 18th century implies that you believe none existed. (If so, that's a damn foolish belief, since tinderboxes have been found from thousands of years ago.) That water-resistant metal ones would be merely expensive is another thing altogether ... and, I might add, an added cost that your average adventurer would find trivial.

(Come to that, the question's near-to-moot in low-tech fantasy. An Ignite Fire item is about as cheap as magic items get. Barring serious restrictions on item creation and/or availability, I can't see any non-broke/non-pyrophobic PC without one.)
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Old 05-19-2023, 04:15 PM   #22
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Default Re: Wet torch

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Why don't you point us to a metal tinderbox in a museum collection dated before the 18th century.
You're right, at least mostly. The ubiquitous little steel airtight metal tinderboxes are indeed an 18th century European/European colonial item. Maybe late 17th c. at best.

I found one elaborate brass tinderbox alleged to have belong to Henry VIII which might be 16th century, but I can't imagine that Henry ever had to light a fire in his life (that's one of the many things servants are good for).

I'd assumed that because iron furisons/fire strikers were a common medieval item that some clever medieval jeweler or locksmith had invented an airtight metal tinderbox, especially since fire pistons are an ancient (but never commonly adopted in Europe) invention. I was wrong. There isn't the selection of pre-1600 metal tinderboxes from archeological sites that I was expecting. Renaissance/ medieval images I could find only show domestic wooden tinderboxes.

That's what I get for assuming "old and simple invention, could easily have been made with TL3 tech" is actually medieval/renaissance rather than being one of the thousands of 17th or 18th century refinements of earlier technology.

FWIW, ancient to medieval people on the go appear to have kept their fire-starting materials in a waxed or greased bag. That might have kept out the rain but it wouldn't protect the tinder inside if you got soaked.
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Old 05-19-2023, 06:30 PM   #23
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Default Re: Wet torch

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Mm, but now you're changing the goalposts. Throwing out a dare to find a metal tinderbox predating the 18th century implies that you believe none existed.
The claim which needs justification was:

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Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
Which is why medieval and early modern tinderboxes were a) water resistant, b) made from metal so they could stand being roasted over a fire to more quickly dry out wet tinder. In some cases, they had a tight enough seal that they could pyrolize tinder (i.e., turn it into charcoal) to make it even more flammable.
If tinderboxes, in general, in "the middle ages" or "the early modern period" were made from metal, you should be able to easily point to examples (and the average fantasy game with torches does not have an 18th/19th century flavour). It looks like Pursuivant can't find them easily (whereas there are a few brass or pewter needlecases from medieval sites in most big European collections).

Obviously magic can light fires, but magic can create lights so you don't need torches in the first place! And in any case, "I light the torch with Ignite Fire" is a solution to the problem of how to light the torch after swimming with your backpack.
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Last edited by Polydamas; 05-19-2023 at 06:33 PM.
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Old 05-19-2023, 06:43 PM   #24
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Default Re: Wet torch

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Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
You're right, at least mostly. The ubiquitous little steel airtight metal tinderboxes are indeed an 18th century European/European colonial item. Maybe late 17th c. at best.

I found one elaborate brass tinderbox alleged to have belong to Henry VIII which might be 16th century, but I can't imagine that Henry ever had to light a fire in his life (that's one of the many things servants are good for).

I'd assumed that because iron furisons/fire strikers were a common medieval item that some clever medieval jeweler or locksmith had invented an airtight metal tinderbox, especially since fire pistons are an ancient (but never commonly adopted in Europe) invention. I was wrong. There isn't the selection of pre-1600 metal tinderboxes from archeological sites that I was expecting. Renaissance/ medieval images I could find only show domestic wooden tinderboxes.

That's what I get for assuming "old and simple invention, could easily have been made with TL3 tech" is actually medieval/renaissance rather than being one of the thousands of 17th or 18th century refinements of earlier technology.

FWIW, ancient to medieval people on the go appear to have kept their fire-starting materials in a waxed or greased bag. That might have kept out the rain but it wouldn't protect the tinder inside if you got soaked.
It is scary how many "old-timey ways of doing things" date to the 18th/19th century or maybe the later middle ages.

If you knew in advance and had time to experiment I am sure you could find a way to get a light source and a way of igniting it through a brief swim using low-tech means (seal them in a glazed jar with pitch? have a copperworker make that airtight brass tinderbox with a spring lid?), but if you just soaked a random backpack I think you would be in trouble making light with anything in it afterwards.
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Old 05-19-2023, 09:19 PM   #25
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Default Re: Wet torch

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if you just soaked a random backpack I think you would be in trouble making light with anything in it afterwards.
If you soaked a modern backpack you'd likely be in trouble, let alone ancient.

Realistically, trying to get yourself and your gear safely through an underwater passage is probably a full day project. It's not like torches are the only thing that would take exception to being wet.
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Old 05-19-2023, 09:37 PM   #26
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Default Re: Wet torch

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If you soaked a modern backpack you'd likely be in trouble, let alone ancient.

Realistically, trying to get yourself and your gear safely through an underwater passage is probably a full day project. It's not like torches are the only thing that would take exception to being wet.
Yes, you're probably right.
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Old 05-19-2023, 09:38 PM   #27
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Tinder is just combustible material worked into very small pieces (high surface to volume ratio so they heat up quickly from small sparks) and dried. It can be fungus or rotten wood or grass or threads of linen or fine charcoal.

But if it is soaked, its not going to be usable without days in hot sun.
Yeah, interesting food for thought.,
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Old 05-19-2023, 11:46 PM   #28
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It's certainly possible to construct a watertight container quite early, though the reverse of keeping a valuable liquid like a perfume [in] is probably more common. For tinder but I think most people were content with good enough to keep the rain off, as frankly most hikers still are. You don't plan on immersing yourself in water, that's a serious river crossing accident that might very well get you killed, not something you should plan around.

Lacquer boxes can be watertight, and I've seen examples from the 14th century. Lacquerware itself is neolithic, but I don't know when people first made [boxes] from it. It'd be fairly expensive for carrying tinder, but I bet some people did. Certainly there are lacquerware tobacco/snuff boxes at a later period, though they can't very well predate the introduction of tobacco to the orient....

Bamboo tubes can be pretty airtight too.

Even in the west watertight scroll cases are much more ancient. Jewish mezuzah cases, hung on the door out in the weather and traditionally checked "twice every seven years", so clearly expected to hold up through multiple storms, are a 2000 year old tradition at this point.

Is a waterproof tinderbox going to be normal? No. Is it particularly strange and difficult by the standards of specialty equipment your typical dungeon delver carries around? Probably not.
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Old 05-20-2023, 07:05 PM   #29
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Default Re: Wet torch

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I think wet matches are basically garbage, i don't even know if they would dry out.
Depends on what type of match you're talking about.

Wooden matches can dry and work fine, cardboard matches are basically destroyed for use as a match, but if dried work fine as 'quick start' tinder material. These matches only date back to 1826.

Slow and black matches, the old rope wicks kept alight and used to ignite cannons and firearms would be useless if wet. Though as long as they weren't vigorously soaked, they'd probably still (mostly) work once properly dried out.

Wooden strike anywhere's are easily turned into waterproof matches by just coating them with wax. I kept a 10 pack in my bag for emergencies, ironically they're in a watertight case... which also has a lighter in it.
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Old 05-20-2023, 10:00 PM   #30
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Default Re: Wet torch

And if someone wants to buy a special waterproof tinderbox they are welcome to spend the money weight and time that this requires, if they get a $5 item out of the Basic Set they get whatever is commercially available. They absolutely do not get to pay no attention, spend the default amount of money and weight, and retrospectively announce that they have a special tinderbox which can withstand not just rain under rain gear but prolonged immersion or even diving (the OP says swim underwater, the deeper you go the more pressure from the water outside).

People I know who do a lot of camping with 18th c. and earlier kit seem to think that a light, sturdy, and rain-proof tinderbox is the Holy Grail.
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