basicly yeah, its a about as simple a circut as possible so i guess you could call it short, the resistance of the elemet is the key. The 'bits' from the hardware store, were some wire (with low res.) and a push button switch, the wire that i used for the heating element came from a canibilized soldering iron or something, but its basicly a small coil of nickchrome(sp) i wire (i think thats what its called) i not sure what gauge maby 16 or 18 hooked up to a battery. I just guessed at how many turns to make it, but its about a half inch long and i used a peice of stainless steel welding rod that was 1/8th inch dia. as the form that was then removed from the coil. the coil was put into the glass tube with the ends sticking out of two of the holes. I have been fooling around with electronics ever since i was a wee lad so this project was basicly a late night hack when my lighter ran out of fuel. But it worked so much better, that i just kept useing it, i have no idea how long the element will last but i bet it will burn out sooner or later.