Lighter Flick

How it's made

Source

a hinged flint lighter opens, its toothed wheel scrapes the flint, then escaping gas ignites. Lid stops are 1–3 ms filtered noise strikes; 9–14 overlapping 2–5 ms tooth bursts form the rasp.

Body

a small metal shell has damped inharmonic modes near 1.4, 2.7, 4.3 and 6.8 kHz, T60 18–65 ms. A muted 620 Hz cavity sits below the lid snap; upper modes die faster than the lower ones.

Envelope

opening at 0–45 ms; wheel at 110–300 ms depending on stroke; ignition follows by 8 ms. A 65 ms gas puff settles into a quiet flame, fading gently at 0.78–0.94 s without a closing click.

Movement

the wheel teeth spread apart as the thumb slows; rasp colour descends from 6 to 3 kHz. Filtered random flutter moves the flame amplitude and cutoff, without a tonal burner whistle.

Variation

seeded tooth timing, strength and shell tuning vary slightly. Shell changes mode scale; stroke changes wheel duration; wear adds roughness; gas controls puff and flame balance.

Presets

crisp metal pocket, muted compact, deliberate worn wheel and quick bright strike. All layers are dry and centred for use as close Foley; no room response is baked in.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.