How to make a Fire Piston
By admin • May 16th, 2007 • Category: Fire StartingI will be cleaning up and fine tuning this tutorial, due to requests I wanted to get something posted quickly. This is a fun and rewarding project and shouldn’t take you longer than one hour to make a fire piston. I will try and obtain the exact dimensions of the brass tube and alluminum shaft (see materials list). If you need tips or additional help please post a comment.
Materials for building a fully functioning fire piston: solid alluminum rod (tried a hollow one on attempt #2 and it didn’t work), brass tube, small ruber o-ring, some fast drying metal filler, drill, vise, drill bits, hack saw, 1 screw, miscellaneous wood for the handle (I used a piece of an oak chair leg), some sand paper, some lubricant (i used petroleum jelly) and some charcloth.
The alluminum rod should fit and slide nicely into the brass tube already, you will just have to find a set that works i dont have the exact dimensions of the tube and rod that i used, but it shouldnt matter. The best test is when your purchasing the alluminum rod and brass tube is to plug the end of the tube with your finger and push and release the rod quickly if you get some resistance and the rod bounces back then your should be fine.
1)cut your peices of tube and rod to the length you want. i put the rod in the tube and cut both peices at the same time.
2)put your rod into your drill to create a make-shift lathe and put your drill into your vice. use your hacksaw as your chisel and try to make a nice groove about 1/2 inch from the bottom of your rod for your o-ring (this is the hardest step to making a fire piston. 
if you make your o-ring grove to deep then your o-ring will not create the seal that is required. its better to make your groove to big and sand down your o-ring for the best fit. A fire piston works by compressing air and without a proper seal it simply won’t work.
3) drill a small hole in the top of your alluminum rod for the screw as well as the material you want to use for the handle.
4) drill a a bigger hole in the bottom of your rod for your fire piston tinder, it doesnt have to be to deep and should be big enough to hold your tinder (charcloth)
5) using a drill bit or a punch slightly widen out the top of your brass tube to better allow your rod to snug its way into the tube.
6) using the metal filler/epoxy (i’ll get the name of it) but its more solid than liquid fill the bottom of your brass tube and leave a bunch of the product on the outside of the tube to form a nice shaped ball and cup it in the palm of your hand for a comfortable fit. 
also using some of your extra alluminum rod push it down the tube so your filler will be flat inside the tube. your tube is now complete, back to the rod.
7) lighty sand down the rod and put your o-ring on. the o-ring i used had a way smaller diameter than the rod and i had to use a needle to assist on getting the ring on. test for snugness at this time. if your rod goes all the way into the tube with no resistance then try an new o-ring, if its way to hard to push down into the tube, then sand some of the -ring off. 
you will know you have a good seal when you push your rod into the tube and the rod pops back out somewhat (mine popped out about 2 inches, but my tube and rod were long about 8 inches)
attach your handle to your rod, it would be a good idea to drill an indention into your handle, because you dont want your rod to hit the bottom of the tube. their should be a gap between your rod and the bottom of the tube (about 3/16 of an inch).
9) put some lube on your rod and stuff some charcloth into the tinder hole.
10) give your fire piston the ole college try on my third prototype i got an ember on the 3rd try, but the 4th one i made took on the first go.
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absolute genius. I can’t wait to see and make this fire piston. your site is the only one with clear instructions. thanks !
Thank you, I hope I can inspire other people to come up with new and better ways to make these fun little toys. Be sure to check out the video of the fire piston in action.
Type your comment here.where do you get the brass rod and aluminum tube?i really want to try this out.
I got the brass tube and alluminum rod at ace hardware. Im sure you can find them at any major hardware retailer. just make sure that the alluminum rod slides nicley in the brass tube. and perform the pressure test by sealing one end of the tube with your finger and slide the rod in, if the rod slightly bounces back out of the tube then you have a set that will work. Thanks for posting.
im going to build a fire piston in metal shop next week. all aluminum and very low tolerances
Cool!!! make me one.
I was wondering if you tried this with copper tubing/plumbing pipe. That way, you could solder on a cap on the closed end. I was thinking that you could also use a dowel rod as the piston with an “O” ring? Have you tried these?
i tried used a wood dowel, but with a wooden table leg and I couldn’t drill a smooth enough bore for the dowel. Im sure anything that fits properly and creates a good seal will work. I know someone made one out of PVC pipe but it was to large of a piston for my liking.
A good tube to use is an aluminum arrow shaft. size 2216 to be exact. there are other bigger sizes but this one works good. Wooden drawer handles work good for the piston handle too.
A couple of thoughts…
I’ve seen copper tubing in the plumbing section at Lowes that already has a closed round end on it. You would probably still want to make the end larger to spread out the force of it, but you could use anything. Drill a hole in a superball or something.
In particularly cold weather, would the metal suck too much of the heat out to keep the coal lit? I suppose if you kept it in your pocket or on a necklace it would be warmed by your body heat or you could just hold it or something for a while to warm it up first.
Does anyone know of any non-metal materials that wouldn’t transfer away the generated heat yet still be easy to use in making one of these? Or does it really not matter?
Thanks for the comment Gun Geek and I can’t really give you a great answer to your question. As far as home made construction it would be hard to make one out of wood similar to the traditional fire pistons. If you had a lathe and some time I’m sure you could machine one good enough to not have to worry about heat loss using wood. I have seen some on the market made out of high density carbon plastic, but I would imagine that would be hard to make as well.
Type your comment here. Hardware stores have thin wall brass tubing in standard sizes. Note-the tubing is sized by the inside diamenter measurement (3/8 inch, 1/2 inch, etc). Such stores also have brass lamp fittings which are sized by outside diameter measurement. These are made of thicker wall tubing, have threaded ends, come in various lengths and closely fit into the thin wall brass tubing. Instead of o-rings, wrap and tie silk thread onto one of the threaded ends and lube with Vaseline. Hobby stores have preformed and predrilled hardwood balls normally used for wheels on wooden toys-use these and metal-to-wood glue (Liquid Nails, etc.) on the other threaded end of the lamp fitting for the handle of the fire piston. For impressive fire pistons, visit a woodworking shop and pick up some of their inexpensive but gorgeous scraps of exotic hardwoods. You can cut off a 1/3 length for the piston handle, drill a slightly oversized hole into the 2/3 length piece of the scrap, metal epoxy the brass tube into that and then shape it into whatever shape you want. Hint, use a drill press, the hole must be straight.
Brass lamp fittings made of thicker wall tube are mentioned.
I assume this is for the plunger as described. How are you filling the tube so as to only have a small cavity for the charcloth.
Type your comment here. Thanks for the info!!! I just made a fire piston from brass tubing and brass rod and the plummers epoxie, all from Ace hardware. The brass tubing was 9/32″ and the brass rod was 1/4″ a perfect fit. I used their smallest O-ring, a #60.
I used a arrow cut off tool to cut everything and to make the groove. The only problem I had was the plummers epoxie had a leak in the bottom, put on more epoxie and then had a leak at the top by the tube… used the rest of the epoxie there and now it works great! I also used a wooden knob that I got from ace for the plunger handle, I just drilled it out larger and used 5 min epoxie to hold it on the rod.
Tip for transfering the coal to the tinder to make a fire: Use a small piece of char cloth in your tinder and drop your coal on that!
Great stuff James! You are the only one that has posted that has made one and wrote about it. Congrats and thanks for viewing my site.
you guys are lucky all english hardware stores are rubbish id be lucky if i could get the rod let alone the tubing great site though i will try to make one with what i can get .
Thanks admin for the comments, and thanks again for all the info here!
Good luck finding parts Rob. You can always order tubbing and rod online too.
I made a few other fire pistons and didn’t want to just toss the first one so I put it on ebay. If anyone wants to see what it looked like, its Item number: 270214834577
Anyways I have about 5 or 6 now! LOL, and some cocobolo wood on order for the next one.
Thank you for you directions. Just as you describe, it did not take long at all. I had to use a steel rod instead of aluminum, which was a little harder to work with. Even still it works great!!! Can’t wait to use it hiking. Thank you very much for posting this, it made it a breeze to make!!!
hi just made 3 in uk
used 8mm plummers gas pipe from b&q
6mm brass rod cap ends for gas pipe soldered in place.
tap washer orings
the groves in the piston
char cloth was made
this makes the whole thing easy to work
i did a comparison with a flint and steel and fire piston side by side the mset up time was almost the same but the fire piston got the fire going in around half the time