yes
let's go this is a real life minecraft
torch and it works exactly as you'd
expect
lighting without the need for any
external heat but is this really
possible with just coal in a stick or
how far do you have to stray from
minecraft's recipe for this to work irl
of the over 250 minecraft recipes that
can be made without a crafting table
the torch is likely the most iconic
requiring only a stick and a piece of
coal or charcoal
no serious player would be caught dead
exploring without at least a handful of
torches in their hot bar
it's a simple recipe for a simple item
but if you tried it in real life
with this thing even light i was
determined to find out so i headed to a
local forest in search of some specially
shaped sticks the minecraft torch recipe
includes no way to attach the coal but
if it's split in just the right way
i found that friction did a decent job
of holding the fuel on
testing began immediately using a blow
torch as a source of external heat
so let's see if you can even light this
thing
so far we're getting nowhere there are
little like flakes chipping off and
stuff
i've no earthly idea why that is
happening despite
blasting the coal with immense amounts
of heat i couldn't get this stuff to
light or at the very least i
couldn't get it to stay lit next i
tested charcoal and for this i just used
store-bought briquettes
holy crap dude that technically worked
holy crap
i did not think that would work at all
the results literally blew my mind
they seemed too good to be true and as
it turned out
they were does it smell like lighter
fluid
these brick hats were laced with lighter
fluid which is why i smelled petroleum
as soon as i blew it out
which meant i needed to repeat the test
and since i now saw kingsford charcoal
as dubious at best
i would need to make it myself a process
which turns out to be pretty simple and
it's surprisingly accurate to what we
see in minecraft but
more on that in a bit drilling a paint
can in public got me some pretty strange
looks but it worked pretty darn well to
create some charcoal with which i could
retest the torch and the results here
were
well
it seems to be lighting and then going
out but
interestingly you can kind of blow on it
and get it started up again
i chose a particularly porous piece of
wood meaning that lots of air could flow
through it
and this resulted in a surprisingly well
sustained burn
but not a sustained flame it was
releasing tons of heat
however almost none of that was actually
converted into light
making this torch rather useless in a
minecraft type situation but
if you know me i'm not about to go down
without a fight
so it was time to start on phase two
phase two meant processing our fuel in
ways not explicitly shown by minecraft
but which are realistically possible
with the game's technology
and only the ingredients shown in the
recipe the challenge is that both fuels
here require a sustained amount of heat
in order to stay lit
coal and charcoal aren't usually used
for their flammability but instead for
their heat output
i tried grinding the coal in the
charcoal reasoning that if i increase
the surface area of either fuel i'd also
increase the
heat retention however in practice this
logic didn't really work out and i
wasn't really sure how i'd be able to
apply this to a torch style setup
i needed a different option so i began
looking into ways of processing kohler
charcoal to create a
liquid fuel when it comes to coal while
technically coal liquefaction
is possible it requires highly
specialized industrial machinery
definitely not something that minecraft
steve could get his hands on
so i turned back to charcoal where my
search led me to pitch
it turns out that in the process of
creating charcoal from highly sappy pine
wood
pitch can be rendered out similar to how
fat is rendered when making bacon
with the second bigger paint can and a
small bundle of sappy pine wood i made a
fire and got to work on my second batch
of charcoal
charcoal is made by partially combusting
wood in an environment that contains
little to no
oxygen essentially you're breaking down
wood into its constituent parts removing
nearly everything and leaving the carbon
it contains
the result is a lightweight porous form
of carbon which we call
charcoal during this process if sap rich
wood is used you can also render that
out in the form of pitch before i
started i made a hole in the bottom of
the upper paint can
while removing those other impurities
the sap is also pulled out of the wood
dripping down into the smaller paint can
placed below
this sap is known as pitch and it's a
highly flammable liquid that solidifies
at room temperature making it easy to
store
and use not to brag but i pretty much
nailed it on my first batch and i
started testing different kinds of
torches
one that's just a stick one that uses
paper and one that uses rags
so you can see that this is a really
highly flammable liquid
and so technically right there we have
minecraft's torch but this just won't
last very long
i want to see if we can do a little
better so let's try the paper towel i'm
curious to see this
yeah that's going to burn like nobody's
business and if i had soaked the whole
thing
it would actually protect the paper
itself from burning
okay now the real torch once again we
have created a torch
it's dripping hot tar yes these all work
really well so well that i could have
stopped here but as the mythbusters
famously said
if it's worth doing it's worth overdoing
i wanted to match minecraft's results
exactly
which meant doing the seemingly
impossible making a long lasting
wood torch that also lights itself
ideally with ingredients that are
plausible in minecraft
in steve's torch placement animation we
can see that he clearly swings the torch
before it sticks to the wall
suggesting that he might be striking it
against something as he's moving it into
place
and while it's not clearly shown you can
imagine that this friction
might be enough to set the torch ablaze
while pitch is an excellent
long burning fuel it's not nearly
volatile enough to light easily from
friction alone so
we'll need to give our torch a tip that
will help it start a bit
more easily a job best suited for
phosphorus
see phosphorus was the first element
ever scientifically discovered way back
in 1669 by a guy named hennig brand
who figured out that if you let buckets
of piss sit around for a while you can
boil it down to a paste
mix that paste with some sand and
ultimately distill
white phosphorus which is so reactive
that it glows in the dark and even
bursts into flames just by reacting with
the moisture in the air
while phosphorus doesn't technically
appear in minecraft the good news is
that steve already has all the tools
needed to make it himself
fire sand and buckets of urine and while
white phosphorus is a bit too volatile
to be useful
its brother red phosphorus is perfect
for our torch
since it won't randomly combust in the
air but it'll still light easily with
just a little bit of
friction while phosphorus is notoriously
hard to get in the u.s
i was able to harvest a bit of red
phosphorus directly from the sides of
matchboxes
to serve as the torch's primary ignition
in combination with some crushed up
match heads which will extend the burn
time this will achieve the same end
result as a 100 phosphorous tip but it's
a heck of a lot easier for me to work
with
and after nearly 10 hours of grinding
pasting and gluing
i was finally ready to test the torch
yes let's go
once the pitch is going nice and steady
this is a real minecraft torch this is
fueled
by pitch created in the process of
creating charcoal it's viable
in the game the only difference is that
this uses a supply of red
phosphorus to light it from nothing more
than friction
now if that's not a real-life minecraft
torch i don't know what is
thank you guys so much for watching if
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like on it let me know down in the
comments if you want to see another
video like this one thank you so much to
my patrons who make videos like this one
possible you can check that out down at
the link in the description and if you
just want to hang out in between videos
or talk about cool projects
you can join the discord which is
totally free all right but seriously is
this not the coolest thing you have
ever seen look at that that is that's a
real minecraft torch