Along the same lines - a couple of weeks ago I bought myself a "Matchsafe" - similar to the one the US Army issues but international orange instead of OD. I wasn't going to, but it was only a dollar, so I figured "What the heck?"

I took Ranger Rick's advice - instead of putting matches in it, I just crammed it full of cotton balls. (I also put in a ferrocerium rod from Hood's Woods as a backup.)

Yesterday, I was trying out various scraper implements to see which ones would strike a spark. Well, eventually, I ended up trying the blade from a knife (an old one that a friend of mine threw out when he moved) and even that wouldn't work.

I was sure that I had gotten a spark from this "flint sparker" when I bought it, but damned if I can get it to produce a spark now. Maybe I imagined that I got a spark from it and it's just a cheap knockoff; but I'd hate to find out in an emergency survival situation that I'd cleverly left all my matches behind in favour of a flint that didn't spark. <img src="images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />