How To Light A Fire With A Flint And Steel

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We can then capture the hot shavings onto proper tinder and blow it into a flame. The flint edge must be shard and we must strike by coming down the edge of the flint at a right degree angle. So lets discuss several methods to make one of our best friends in the woods, FIRE.

If you don’t scrape hard, no sparks will come and no fire will be made. Put dried grass, leaves, or paper into a small pile that will be used as tinder. As far as the steel used for this process, we experimented with different high carbon steels such as an old file and the back of our high carbon knife. Once the spark lands on the Char cloth we see a red ring that begins to expand. If we blow on the cloth, the ring will get larger and the temperature increases. In a demonstration by Ryan Johnson when he made a striker, then started a fire on the first strike.

Light My Fire

You can start a fire by striking the blade of your closed pocketknife against the sharp edge of a rock. The rock must be hard enough to shave tiny slivers of molten steel from the knife. When the material is glowing, transfer it to a bundle of bark shavings or dry grass and gently blow to flame. The more common tinder is char cloth, which is coarse, woven cotton fabric charred inside an airtight container until it’s mostly carbon.

Start a fire without matches using flint and steel. Start a fire without matches using a glass lens. “Flint” should be any hard, quartz based stone (flint, chert, quartzite, jasper, etc.) found on the reservation that is harder than steel.

Items We Would Need To Start A Flint Steel Fire:

If you are using charred cloth, place a piece into the depression of the tinder bundle before you begin. Oakum is made from jute fibers, the same stuff gunnysacks are made of. It is normally pounded into the seams of a wooden boat as sort of a primitive caulking. A little bit of oakum is easily fluffed into a small nest, which can accept your char cloth once it carries a spark. It’s available on-line in many places; a pound will cost you about $7.00 and will last years. Preparation for the fire you’re about to build also involves preparing your flint piece or flint rod and steel.

And we’re also fortunate that our blacksmith in residence, Ross of Kaos Blacksmiths, is able to make us fire steels in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Prep is first – gathering of fire steel, tinder, kindling, a bucketful of twigs, an armful of sticks, a handful of branches, and a couple of logs. I do this prep b/c I don’t want to have to leave the fire unattended while I am searching for more fuel. Once you have suitable rock, steel and tinder, the next most important aspect is speed. The faster the rock and steel are moving the better.

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I would caution you to use only small pieces of char cloth to prevent it from touching the sides of the bowl. Unlike a match or lighter that is drawn downward into the tobacco, the char cloth can touch the sides of the bowl. When you stoke it, it gets pretty hot and prolonged contact with the pipe could damage the wall of your pipe leading to hot spots and eventually a burnout. If you’ve ever got up on a cold, dark morning and flipped a switch or struck a match, you’ll be glad you’re living after the mid-19th century. Once upon a time, anyone in a northern winter who didn’t keep a fire burning all night had to start the day by clashing flint on steel to make a spark.

Char cloth is not magic, but it feels like it. A tiny spark touches it and immediately it glows red. Funny thing is that the harder you blow the hotter the char cloth burns. If there is no wind, I find a piece of char cloth will burn for several minutes, so there’s no urgency to act quickly.

How To Start A Fire Using Flint

The sparking sticks are really much more useful than matches. To save a little weight I carry the Firesteel Mini and use the back edge of the small knife I carry to create sparks rather than carry the supplied metal striker. I found the Firesteel a great backup but it was really much easier to use a lighter, especially if there was any wind. With the Firesteel and lighter I see no need to bring matches. If you do have a glowing piece of char cloth, great!

It was pretty time consuming to make a quarter size pile and I lost a bit to the wind. I find the toughest step is from the kindling to the twigs; once I have the twigs burning well, the rest seems easy. I think it helps to slowly add twigs by leaning them on the inside of the chimney. Just aim it at the pool of alcohol and let ‘er rip. Kinda spooks other campers though – the shower of sparks followed by the POOF of the stove catching.

Is It Possible To Use A Flint And Steel With Wet Tinder?

Birch bark is excellent tinder because it is full of oil. You need only a tiny amount of birch bark to start a fire. But I wouldn’t expect it would be good for flint & steel .

Starting Fire With Flint And Steel

It wasn’t just for the warmth in cold weather. It must have been so convenient to take a light from the hearth, and fan the embers back to life without having to start another day by knocking stone on metal. I just found my stash of char cloth from 30+ years ago, along with my flint and striker. Once the flame has taken a hold to the material, begin to add the medium and large pieces of wood to the fire.

Preparation For Starting A Fire

There are other materials that you can use to catch that spark, too. While I prefer to use charcloth, you might want to try some other things. Here are some great options to use when starting a fire with flint and steel. Char cloth makes starting a fire with flint and steel much easier. This is because this cloth has been allowed to carbonize.

Can You Start A Fire With A Knife?

The heat from that spark creates a tiny little ember on the cloth. If you blow on that ember then you will watch it expand. This ember is what will catch your larger bundle of tinder on fire. The first time I learned this I couldn’t believe it. When you shave off that high carbon steel with the sharp edge and friction that tiny piece of metal becomes the spark.

How Do You Start A Fire Without Flint And Steel?

But at that point in the fire making process I tend to keep everything sheltered so the wind doesn’t blow out the first initial flame. There are dozens of natural tinders that will catch the sparks from F&S in their UNCHARRED state and hundreds more that will when charred. Most fungi, plant fluffs, plant piths, softwood trees, punkwood, etc work charred, uncharred or both. Natural tinders can be charred without the use of a tin by several methods. Speaking of tins, most tins do not need any holes punched in them. The less chance of any oxygen entering the tin the better, as long as enough gases escape that the lid stays on.

This Is An Excerpt From Outdoor Survival Guide By Randy Gerke

It has become my primary fire starting tool… it has moved from the emergency kit to my main cook kit. Every backpacker or hiker should carry a fire steel with them in their emergency gear repair kit. This is one emergency preparedness and survival tool that you should never be without.

Goodbye To Tinderboxes

Not to be a snitch but i’m pretty sure it’s magnesium shavings, not flint. Some files are case hardened so there’s not much carbon in the whole piece; in those cases forging redistributes whatever is there. On the other hand, is your flint a proven sparker? I have chert laying all over our place and some of it produces better spark than others. The image above shows several types of flint, chert, agate, and quartz, which can be purchased from Emberlit along with various steel striker pendants. For more info on these items, check out our fire-starter buyer’s guide from Issue 18 of our magazine.

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The common denominator is quartz, though any rock that is 58 HRC or higher and has a sharp edge works. Dozens of types of granite, sandstone, onyx, agate, chert, jasper, obsidian, quartz, flint, etc all work. Obviously once you have got a fire lit you have the means to dry more tinder to replenish what you have used. Indeed there was a time in teh not too distant past when tinder box was the normal way of making fire.