This is where we come in. We’ve researched the best magnifying glasses, put them to the test, and now the results are in: the overall best, a lightweight everyday carry option, and an upgrade option. If you need a magnifying glass that will add tons of versatility in a survival situation, one of our picks will keep your survival in focus.

You never want to spend too much money on one thing when it comes to your fire kit. It’s better to diversify your tools within your budget to make sure you are covered for a wide range of scenarios.

The amount of money you spend on something like a small lens shouldn’t blow out your entire budget. There is a wide range of fire-starting tools, and magnifying glasses are one of the more conditional and niche methods.

Cassegraintelescope

Essilor News. (2018). Missed Boy Scouts? No Problem. Learn How to Use Your Glasses to Start a Fire. Essilor USA. (Source).

This is an updated review of the best magnifying glass fire starters. Our first review roundup was several years ago and we will continue to update as new products are released and as new survival magnifying glass fire starters are introduced.

Mathematicaoptics

You’ll notice in the video that she goes for the char-cloth for tinder, which is very forgiving and takes much less time to ignite. Even with the perfect conditions that we laid out above, one of the most important things you need to keep in mind is patience. A magnifying glass fire requires a steady hand, attention to detail, and plenty of time.

This magnifying glass is a small, lightweight magnifying glass solution designed to be durable enough for everyday use. With a 1.6″ diameter lens, it is just the right size to easily get a small focal point for fire starting.

We considered a wide range of magnifying glasses with focal points capable of starting a localized fire. We narrowed the focus to hand-held portable ones with smaller, more manageable sizes.

Refractor telescopes

Beck, H. (1928). Early Magnifying Glasses. The Antiquaries Journal; Cambridge University Press. Volume 8. Issue 3. Pages 327 – 330. (Source).

I'm Sean Gold, the founder of TruePrepper. I am also an engineer, Air Force veteran, emergency manager, husband, dad, and avid prepper. I developed emergency and disaster plans around the globe and responded to many attacks and accidents as a HAZMAT technician. Sharing practical preparedness is my passion.

All of our experience and the testing we do to determine the best magnifying glass is useless without listing our research sources and references. We leaned on these for the book knowledge that we paired with our hands-on testing and practical military and prepping experience:

This little piece of glass shipped from the UK is the real deal. Created just for bushcraft and to make solar fires, it is optimized for fire starting with its size and focal length. The 8X magnification combined with the 2″ size (50mm) makes it easy to light that tinder in sunny conditions.

A magnifying glass is a versatile survival tool and makes for an excellent backup fire-starting solution. Using a magnifying glass as a fire starter can be more difficult than it seems. Several factors come into play that could derail your attempt:

Using a magnifying glass to start a fire doesn’t leave you with any less potential to start a fire the next time. Matches, lighters, and even ferro rods eventually run out of strikes.

Best of all, they are darn tough and durable. You won’t have to worry about breaking your glass magnifying lens since they are made of razor-thin flexible polymer. Best Glide prints some survival quotes on the protective sleeves, and three of them come in a pack.

Telescope opticsexplained

The Best Glide Credit Card Fresnel Lens is a marvel. If you don’t have one already, you are missing out. Fresnel lenses are so thin (0.4 millimeters) that you can store one pretty much anywhere- not just in your wallet. Stash some in your survival books, playing cards, or auto repair manual- you can keep a powerful magnifying glass in all of these. If you do keep one in your wallet, you won’t notice it because it only weighs 5 grams.

One of the main tips I can give you is that you need to hold still to let the energy and heat build up on the small focal point. I brace my hand by extending my pinky if I’m lighting tinder on the ground, or brace my hand with my shoe or other gear if it’s in a stove. I’ve found it to be a lot like a firearm, where you make plenty of contact points to reduce sway (and lost energy in this case).

The type of magnifying glass is important since it rules out what can and can’t start a fire. For instance, if you are nearsighted, your glasses cannot help you start a fire since they will disperse the energy. If you are farsighted, however, then you are in luck. You could use your glasses in a pinch to focus the sun’s energy to a point and start a fire. If you have a low prescription, it may be more difficult though since your focal length will be pretty far away from the glasses, and hard to hold steady.

Take care of your gear and it will take care of you. Don’t stash it away, but get it out to get familiar with it if you are not using it every day. Be sure to get familiar with the magnifying glass you go with and practice using it so you can get used to the focal length.

Largest opticaltelescope

A good magnifying glass fire starter is a huge upgrade for a variety of survival kits. Sure, being able to start a fire with nothing but a lens is pretty darn cool, but there are also several advantages to having a magnifying glass handy. For starters, they are not consumable (meaning they don’t get used up, like matches, lighters, or ferro rods) and they are extremely versatile. There are several options to consider when it comes to magnifying glass fire starters: lens material, focal length, durability, etc.

We’re always looking for new and better equipment, so if you have a magnifying glass in your fire kit that you swear by, let us know in the comments. We review most of our tested gear annually so we can try to get it in the next roundup round and see if it will beat out our top picks.

The diameter of the objective is referred to as the aperture; it typically ranges from a few centimetres for small spotting telescopes up to one metre for the largest refractor in existence. The objective, as well as the eyepiece, may have several components. Small spotting telescopes may contain an extra lens behind the eyepiece to erect the image so that it does not appear upside-down. When an object is viewed with a refractor, the image may not appear sharply defined, or it may even have a predominant colour in it. Such distortions, or aberrations, are sometimes introduced when the lens is polished into its design shape. The major kind of distortion in a refractor is chromatic aberration, which is the failure of the differently coloured light rays to come to a common focus. Chromatic aberration can be minimized by adding components to the objective. In lens-design technology, the coefficients of expansion of different kinds of glass are carefully matched to minimize the aberrations that result from temperature changes of the telescope at night.

All of these features make the Carson MagniFlip 3X Pocket Magnifier an excellent choice for bug out bags, get home bags, and standard survival kits.

While the magnification is listed at 4X, it is somewhat adjustable since the lenses are so flexible. You can bend the lenses lengthwise to adjust the focal distance, giving you more versatility when you are firestarting.

Commonly known as refractors, telescopes of this kind are typically used to examine the Moon, other objects of the solar system such as Jupiter and Mars, and binary stars. The name refractor is derived from the term refraction, which is the bending of light when it passes from one medium to another of different density—e.g., from air to glass. The glass is referred to as a lens and may have one or more components. The physical shape of the components may be convex, concave, or plane-parallel. This diagram illustrates the principle of refraction and the term focal length. The focus is the point, or plane, at which light rays from infinity converge after passing through a lens and traveling a distance of one focal length. In a refractor the first lens through which light from a celestial object passes is called the objective lens. It should be noted that the light will be inverted at the focal plane. A second lens, referred to as the eyepiece lens, is placed behind the focal plane and enables the observer to view the enlarged, or magnified, image. Thus, the simplest form of refractor consists of an objective and an eyepiece, as illustrated in the diagram.

Besides fire starting, magnifying glasses can come in handy in many survival situations. This added versatility can include:

We presented quite a lot of information, but as always: if you have any questions let us know and we would be happy to help. Our research and testing found the Carson MagniFlip Magnifying Glass to be the best option given its value, lens material, focal length, profile, and durability.

What is atelescope

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Our research narrowed the field down to several brands and types of magnifying glasses that we compared: Carson, Adventure Survival Equipment (ASE), Outdoor Supplies Direct, Coopers Bay, Self-Reliance, Grim Workshop, Wenger, and more.

Both the diameter and the focal length are important since they must be close in order to effectively pinpoint this energy in a way that is useful for fire starting.

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Galileo revolutionized astronomy when he applied the telescope to the study of extraterrestrial bodies in the early 17th century. Until then, magnification instruments had never been used for this purpose. Since Galileo’s pioneering work, increasingly more powerful optical telescopes have been developed, as has a wide array of instruments capable of detecting and measuring radiation in every region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Observational capability has been further enhanced by the invention of various kinds of auxiliary instruments (e.g., the camera, spectrograph, and charge-coupled device) and by the use of electronic computers, rockets, and spacecraft in conjunction with telescope systems. These developments have contributed dramatically to advances in scientific knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy, and the universe as a whole.

When you get the right blend of these, you can find a way to harness solar energy to create a fire with magnification. Below, we break down what each of these features means for the lenses that truly set themselves apart.

This article describes the operating principles and historical development of optical telescopes. For explanation of instruments that operate in other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, see radio telescope; X-ray telescope; and gamma-ray telescope.

If that doesn’t get you excited about the potential of starting fires with a magnifying glass, I don’t know what will. As he demonstrates, your imagination is the limit when it comes to harnessing solar energy with lenses.

The 3X magnification helps put the focal distance not too far or close to the lens itself. I can get the perfect distance away from the ground by just extending my pinky for support. This is nice because you do have to hold your position for a while depending on conditions and the tinder you are using.

Eyepieces, which are used with both refractors and reflectors (see below Reflecting telescopes), have a wide variety of applications and provide observers with the ability to select the magnification of their instruments. The magnification, sometimes referred to as magnifying power, is determined by dividing the focal length of the objective by the focal length of the eyepiece. For example, if the objective has a focal length of 254 cm (100 inches) and the eyepiece has a focal length of 2.54 cm (1 inch), then the magnification will be 100. Large magnifications are very useful for observing the Moon and the planets. However, since stars appear as point sources owing to their great distances, magnification provides no additional advantage when viewing them. Another important factor that one must take into consideration when attempting to view at high magnification is the stability of the telescope mounting. Any vibration in the mounting will also be magnified and may severely reduce the quality of the observed image. Thus, great care is usually taken to provide a stable platform for the telescope. This problem should not be associated with that of atmospheric seeing, which may introduce a disturbance to the image because of fluctuating air currents in the path of the light from a celestial or terrestrial object. Generally, most of the seeing disturbance arises in the first 30 metres (100 feet) of air above the telescope. Large telescopes are frequently installed on mountain peaks in order to get above the seeing disturbances.

Solar power, while not always reliable, is incredibly powerful. If the sun is out and you need to get a fire going- you can easily harness the energy to do so with just a small tool. A magnifying glass is an elegant solution. There are no moving parts to break. It doesn’t need electricity. Best of all: magnifying glasses are not consumable.

Telescopelens

But they’re also one of the most sustainable methods, giving you virtually endless fires if you have quality gear that is properly protected.

Lastly, magnifying glasses are found everywhere. Even if you don’t follow our suggestion and add a magnifying glass to your survival kit, chances are that you have one around the house. If you bug out, there are magnifying glasses found everywhere. Some TVs are basically one giant Fresnel lens. Take a look at this ingenuity by harnessing the power of the sun:

telescope, device used to form magnified images of distant objects. The telescope is undoubtedly the most important investigative tool in astronomy. It provides a means of collecting and analyzing radiation from celestial objects, even those in the far reaches of the universe.

A glass lens should produce better results with its clarity. Many bushcrafters swear by well-protected glass lenses that are quality-made because the optical clarity can make the difference between getting a fire started or not.

Magnifying glasses are versatile. You can use a magnifying glass to signal with pinpointed light. You can use it to see smaller objects and far away objects better. Magnifying glasses are often used with detailed maps. Some people even need them to see clearly since they are the lenses in glasses.

Vintage Edmund Scientifictelescope

The velvet carry bag is essential both in and out of the tin because it is a glass lens that you will need to care for. Pick up a Coopers Bay 8X Magnifying Lens if you want to start a fire with a magnifying glass like the pros.

Many magnifying ‘glasses’ are actually made out of plastic. Plastic is usually cheaper to manufacture, but it is usually also harder to crack. There are many different types of plastics, however, so plastic magnifying glasses can have a few drawbacks including:

Magnifying glasses have been around since before 400 BC, and some of the earliest uses were to start fires. It may be old technology, but it is a great tool to include in any survival kit.

Magnifying glasses are small already, but even the ones we tested varied in weight. From glass lenses that need additional protection to carry in your kit to ultra-portable fresnel lenses- a few ounces can make a difference in bug out bags or EDC loadouts.

A magnifying glass can be a cheap, lightweight tool that boosts the functionality, versatility, and redundancy of a survival kit. The gear you carry is one of the most important factors in your preparedness. A magnifying glass is a smart tool to include in your:

How We Review Products: We research thoroughly before selecting the best products to review. We have vast prepping and survival experience and bring in outside experts when needed. Hours on end are spent testing gear in stressful conditions and using specialized testing gear to verify claims. We assign performance criteria and impartially rate each tested item. Learn more about how we test.