How To Make A Homemade Match

Until the mid-1800s, lighting a fire was a painstaking and frustrating process. Tinder—shredded wood pulp, dried grass or wool—had to be ignited with sparks created by striking a coarse stone against steel then stoked with oxygen into a small flame until hot enough to light firewood. Matches were an improvement but often dangerous, because they were made with highly combustible yellow phosphorus. The safety match was invented by a Swedish professor in 1844 and is still in use today. You can make your own strike-anywhere matches, but exercise the utmost caution: the chemicals used to make them are extremely hazardous.

Step 1

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees F.

Step 2

Cut your dowel rods into matchsticks by nicking with a small knife and snapping into 2- to 3-inch lengths.

Step 3

Mix a small amount of potassium chlorate with white glue in a Pyrex or Kimex beaker to create a thick paste. The ratio is not important, so long as the mixture does not drip.

Step 4

Dip the end of each matchstick into the potassium chlorate mixture.

Step 5

Set the matches on an old pan, keeping the paste-covered tip off the pan's surface by resting each match against a length of dowel.

Step 6

Bake your matches for two hours or until the potassium chlorate paste hardens.

Step 7

Make a paste of white glue and red phosphorus in a new Pyrex or Kimex beaker, and stir gently. Do NOT use the beaker in which you mixed the potassium chlorate paste; the two chemicals are explosively reactive and, if combined, can blind, disfigure or even kill you.

Step 8

Dip the baked head of each match in the second paste, and set it on the pan again.

Step 9

Bake the matches for another two hours. When the second paste has hardened and cooled, you can ignite your homemade match on any surface.