Tin Foil / Aluminum Foil

Both Tin Foil and Aluminum Foil are fantastic survival items and serve identical purposes. The first thing I want to mention that hardly anybody seems to realize is that most of the boxes that the foil comes in have tabs at the end that you can push in to keep the foil in place in the box while you tear off the amount you need. So there’s a handy tip for you if you hadn’t realized that before.

You can use foil as a makeshift signaling mirror. Obviously a mirror is better as it is more effective at reflecting light but foil will work too. The advantage of using foil for this purpose is that you can use a very large piece making it more obvious to people passing by.

Foil will also make a great light reflector. This can help stop light shining in a direction that you don’t want it to which is useful for concealing your location. It also amplifies the effectiveness of your flashlight if you point the beam into a curved or angled reflector by spreading the light and giving it more of a lantern effect. A reflector can also of course be used with a camp fire or a candle in exactly the same way.

If you get a forked stick you can actually wrap tin foil over the forked section and cook on the piece of tin foil by holding or wedging it in place over a fire. It’s best to use living, green wood for this task otherwise the stick may catch on fire, break off and drop your food straight into the fire.

You can also simply wrap food in tin foil and place it directly into the embers and use it to make bowls or water containers. This will allow you to boil water to make it sake for drinking.

You can obviously use it for a more traditional use and use it to wrap food that you are saving to eat later or to cover containers. You could even use it as a temporary lid for a bottle or canteen.

If you have a flash light or a radio that needs more batteries than you have with you, you can use a ball of tin foil to fill the empty battery space to run it on less batteries.

I have heard that folding up foil and then cutting through it with scissors will sharpen the scissor blades. I’m not 100% convinced on this but it does clean and hone them making them more effective.

It does a good job of cleaning metal objects if you scrub them with crumpled up foil. This is great for using an improvised scouring pad for your mess tins and eating utensils.

Tinder can also be wrapped in tin foil, this is water resistant so will keep your tinder dry but it also means you will have extra tin foil should you need it. As you may have noticed I’m a big fan of all things multi-use so having something that keeps your tinder dry that has all these uses too is great in my opinion.

If you have fishing equipment and no bait, you can wrap a small piece of foil around a hook to make a lure. Most fish will eat fish that are smaller than them and this tin foil could look like a small fish. They will also try eating something if they see it floating through the water to see if it’s edible, at which point your hook is in their mouth which is all you need. Predatory fish like perch will be your main target using this method however as what you will have is practically a lure.