Well, for a no-burn day we managed to have a pretty good fire-making adventure. We all managed to burn stuff up. It didn't hurt to have some good refreshments through out the day,too.

You might want to get your gang together to do the same thing.

The goal was to widen our survival imagination as well as to practice various fire-related techniques. Among other things everyone had multipe chances to experience use of all of the following fire starter and tinder combinations.

As fire starters:

Bic lighter
Strike anywhere matches
REI stormproof matches
9 volt battery
magnifying glass
Knife struck flint and steel
Blast match flint and steel
Bow drill
Hand drill
Coals from a wood fire

As "tinder:"

Newspaper
Fine steel wool
Wet Match fire stater tabs
Couglan fire starter tabs
Petroleum jelly soaked cotton balls
Dry cotton balls
Inside of road flare
Fluffed fragments of heavy brown twine
Dried and crushed up leaves

We were there for hours trying many different combinations. Pretty much everything worked except the magnifying glass, though not everyone could make everything work.

Newspapers aren't tinder.

Maybe, but they are "tinder."

So why didn't the magnifying glass work?
Was it too cloudy of a day?

Great!!..everyone here needs to try out all the stuff we talk about to see if it really works..someone in an old post said alot of the information in old--1950-60's survival books was bunk
and would never really work--you have the right idea--
did you take any photos ???

?

Great topic/great experience!

What tinders worked best (or even at all) with sparks struck from the flint/knife combo? I've never been able to get that work with anything other than char cloth.

-Blast

Flint/knife and Blast Match are both flint-and-steel spark generators.

The one-handed Blast Match produced are relatively huge spark shower for everyone and easily ignited fine steel wool, road flare stuffing, and newspaper "tinder", sometimes ignited petroleum soaked cotton. I didn't try or see it used to ignite the twine or leaf tinder bundles - next time.

The flint and steel we used was the flint rod edge of a Doan magnesium block. Users found it more difficult to use and the spark shower was relatively weak for most. Still got the fine steel wool going but stuggled to fire up the rest for our users. Next time we will try to have a bigger flint to strike and will also remember to try the magnesium shavings off the Doan block with both its own flint and others.

Does this match your experiences?

Thanks.

With a basic mischmetal rod I have lit

pre char'd candle wick (scrape some filings into a frayed
top)


steel wool


toilet paper (make a cone shape and scrape some filings into
it before making sparks)

Ah, a nomanclature problem. When you said flint I thought you meant the rock rather than a bar of ferrocerium.

Sparks from ferrocerium rods are much hotter and appear in significantly larger numbers than sparks tossed by a knife blade hitting flint/chert/petrified wood/etc and so are much more likely to ignite tinder. I was hoping you found something other than char cloth that would work with old school flint/steel strikers.

-Blast