So, I'm not sure how many people know this, but a fair amount of people on the internet have posted tutorials on how to make an ice lens to start a fire. Obviously, this has several problems, such as the how cloudy the ice is, finding the dimensions of a perfect lens, and needing man-made tools to carve it perfectly. However, I seem to have found an unknown alternative.
A couple of months ago I was thinking about the shape of a lens, and how it reflects light. It suddenly hit me that you could use a sphere for a lens, instead of the classic hemisphere shape. I went to a nearby stream, picked up a piece of cube shaped ice about the size of a pair of clasped hands, and just worked it down to about the size of a golfball by making a kind of "snowball packing" motion. I tried it out on some birch tinder, and it got a fire started within seconds.
The obvious advantages of this are that a) you don't really need any tools to make it, and b) you don't have to worry about the dimensions, you just have to make something roughly spherical. The cloudiness of the ice is a problem, but that can't really be helped.
Just wanted to get some feedback and to share this. Hopefully, it'll help someone out.
