We celebrated Mother's Day with a hike through a local marshland today.


When we reached the beach a couple of hours later, we decided to have a campfire. My son brought his pocket knife so we thought we'd let him have a go at the fire steel.


He almost got it but, when the sparks started, he was a little too nervous to get close enough.


So, Dad stepped in to show him how it's done while I manned the camera.


He was thrilled when it got going, and said "It's like magic!" Too bad we forgot the hotdogs and marshmallows. He might have stayed there all day but we still had a 2 hour hike back to the car.


Best Mother's Day EVER!!

P.S. Since I know my fellow ETSers, here's a pic of his knife. It's an Olympia, made-in-China-bought-at-a-local-military-surplus-store special. It's nothing special but ok for his first, only used with direct supervision sharp. It has one blade, a can/bottle opener, a fork, a spook and the two halves come apart so he can use the knife and fork at the same time with two hands.

Very nice. Thanks for sharing, and HMD!

Thanks Dweste!

Learning how to handle and respect fire young is a good thing. Just a few suggestions, Id Snag a Striker from firesteel.com since a knife can slip off and bite into a steel so easily and make sure you take a toothbrush to the joints of that knife where food loves to hide. I stoped using flatware with any form of scales on them after I found nastieness under a slightly lifted plastic scale on a fork.

Thanks Frisket. It's cleaning time in a few minutes. Good mom!

He tried the striker that came with the firesteel but couldn't get a good grip. I duct taped a little grip on it but he was determined to use his own knife. I picked a set up from the Scout Shop, that has a simulated antler handle. He's tried that one before and it worked well enough but that one was in my other pack. Bad mom!

The real lessons were the fire lay and nursing it after we got the tinder going. He got the bird's nest idea for tinder but wanted to skip right to logs once that got going. It's been a while since our last campfire so he forgot that we weren't going to get a roaring fire from the first spark. Patience Grasshoppr!

http://firesteel.com/products/FireSteel-Super-Scraper.html

Using the hole and possibly drilling another underneath the end of the metal striker threw the plastic im betting you can attach it to something such as a chunk of broomstick or wooden dowel with screws. Id be sure to test this method out yourself with leather gloves on to make sure it works and is safely secured.

Awesome! Thanks Frisket!!

Foraging was a great lesson. There was lots of driftwood on the beach but we've had rain almost every day lately until yesterday so a lot of what we found was damp. We scraped up some bark we found and added it to some dried plants to make tinder. It didn't take long to make a nice little tinder bundle.

He thought he could strike it in the fire lay but soon discovered that he knocked everything over when he got close enough to land the sparks in it. Dad showed him how to light the tinder bundle seperately, get it going, and then transfer it into to the bigger stuff.

Then he learned about the fire triangle, feeding the little fire with enough fuel to keep it going, small stuff first, without smothering it, until there was enough heat to put on some bigger stuff.

He should have used that Flames hat for tinder.

While I am a Dallas Stars fan at heart, that far north, I have to say, GO HABS!

LOL!! He only likes them for the logo. He likes flamejobs. He'd much rather play hockey than watch it. He's a road hockey warrior.