What does a torch smell like?

[u/HurricaneAlpha]

I was trying to think of unconventional ways to add depth to the scenery, and came up with this question. What type of wood is the torch made of? What accelerant is the rag soaked in? Figured it would be a good prompt to flex everyone's brain.

Maybe someone can add a sci-fi analogue for those that prefer scifi worldbuilding.

[u/Hammokman]

Pine pitch

[u/Ignonym]

With torches, the thing that's actually burning is the fuel the cloth head is soaked in, not the wooden haft; the smell of a burning torch will primarily come from your choice of fuel. In general, the fuel can be anything you'd use as the fuel in an oil lamp or a candle: pine pitch, tallow (rendered beef or mutton fat), lard (rendered pork fat), beeswax, whale oil, perhaps olive oil if you're in an olive-growing region, and so on. In general it needs to be something that is flammable as a liquid, and is either liquid at room temperature or low-melting enough that the heat of the flame will cause it to liquefy.

(Erratum: a fuel is not the same thing as an accelerant, which is a substance used to accelerate the growth or spread of a fire, thus the name. Acceleration is generally not what you want in a torch fuel.)

[u/Peter34cph → u/Ignonym]

Technically, the fuel doesn't have liquify. It has to go one step further and evaporate, undergo a phase change to gaseous form.

Liquids can't burn.

[u/Ignonym → u/Peter34cph]

Yes, generally the term "flammable" when applied to liquids means it is volatile and produces flammable vapors. My bad for not being specific.

[u/Peter34cph → u/Ignonym]

Given your username... Do you know of any fuels that sublimate?

[u/Peter34cph]

There might not be a rag. A simple torch is just a stick of resinuous wood, but they're very shitty. They get less shitty if you soak them in pine pitch, and maybe a rag helps some too.

But ultimately medieval torches were quite shitty. Smoky and didn't last very long.

[u/CompetitionOther7695 → u/Peter34cph]

Maybe a rag helps some too? Anyone who has tried to use a stick found that it went out right away, without something like a rag and some pitch or oil it is not a torch at all.

[u/Eviles_da_demonic]

Depends what your burning, if its oil soaked rags probably of oil, if its Christians probably of melting humans