Wanted to see if I could start a fire with my fire steel today using only what natural tinder material in my yard. Talk about a lesson in humility!!

After about an hour of striking the fire steel into tinder bundles made of dried grass and when that didn't work, dried pine needles crushed up, I finally gave in and used my lighter just to try and redeem myself.

I always carry some jute in a little pocket medicine vial along with some matches. My lighter stays on a dummy-cord in my pocket at all times. There are lighter scattered throughout my pack and my fire pouch that I wear on my belt when I'm out hiking has cotton balls w/vaseline in addition to a magnesium stick. So I always have some "non-natural" tinder on hand with back ups. But I wanted to see if I could do it "au natural". Good thing I carry the artificial stuff. If I had to rely on being able to do it w/ just what was lying around, I would've been screwed....

You need real fine, real dry stuff. Be sure to mash grass up to create lots of "split ends," almost thread-like stuff.

And sometimes you just have a bad day.

Move to AZ, Samhain. I've probably won $100 in BBQ party bets, "starting a fire in the backyard without a flame, using whatever is in my pockets and what I find on the ground."

I'm not saying I can do that where you live or when I lived in PNW, (as I finger the firesteel in my pocket ) but its a suckers bet here!

A lesson in humility? Definitely. I can relate! I couldn't do it a few weeks ago at a camp (in Ontario), and wrote it off to weeks of rain and damp tinder. (Shavings from wet wood are still damp!)

Making a bird's nest-type tinder bundle to catch the spark sounds easy but it's not. You need lots of super dry, fluffy stuff and that's not as easy as it seems. We've got a few going but only after some dry hot patches.

One of our Scouts brought a zip-lock bag full of milkweed with him this weekend and got a one-match fire going quite nicely. The other kids thought it was magic. Not sure if it would have worked so well with the firesteel.

thanks dweste.

I'm going to keep working at it until I get it come hell or high water.

I thought I had everything busted up fine enough but the sparks thought other-wise.

I hate it when inanimate objects disagree with me and win the argument.

It is one thing to use natural tinder in the southwest, especially Arizona, and quite another proposition in humid, muggy Louisiana. Just look at the current Arizona wildfires....

True.

My heart goes out to those folks losing their homes or in danger of losing their homes right now.

Out of curiosity: Have you tried firing up some of those cotton balls with your fire steel? What about some magnesium shavings? If the issue *was* the natural tinder, such as too much moisture thanks to high humidity etc., that would help answer that question.

I still have absolutely zero experience with a fire steel (mine is on its way ... hopefully it's here soon!), and really no advice to give from personal experience.

But on the same line of thought, there's also a pretty good reason that char cloth and other portable tinders have been used for a very long time: There's never a guarantee of finding something that will catch a spark, so it makes sense to have at least something with you.

Having grown up in south Louisiana, I can remember well how perpetually wet things can be there.

OOOO steel wool

I can relate. It's a worthy pursuit. Good luck.

Yeah, what materials did you try?

Dry grass can be a pain - I bundle it, then "roll" it around so that the middle starts to fray (grab both ends and rotate it around kind of like bike pedals)

Leaves are crap.

Try bark? I know birch goes up like crazy. Trick is, flip the bark over, use a knife to scrape the bark into 'dust.' It catches a spark real easy. Youtube has a lot of demos if you look it up. That's the best and easiest tinder I've found. I don't know if other tree bark would work as well.

I agree that what you're doing is much harder in a humid hot environment. You might try a few dry fibers of cotton, cut or scraped from clothing or a dry sack. Lint from a clothes dryer is excellent (that's urban survival). Old dried moss from tree bark might also be good. Adding any kind of inflammable material - just a few drops - is also helpful. Rubbing alcohol. Gasoline (few drops only!). 100% DEET mosquito repellant. All might help to do the trick.

Keep us informed.

Pete #2

I have never generated a flame by using only a fire steel and all natural materials. It is a humbling reality check. Were you making it even harder by using an all natural scraper?!

Grass is often problematic. I'm not sure why but I think it has to do with it absorbing moisture. I noticed this when a wad of grass I carefully dried in the sun and which was working for a demonstration stopped working when a summer shower went through and and the humidity went up. Over an hour it went from igniting almost too fast at the touch of a hot spark to resiting great showers of sparks even though it had been kept well under cover.

As an aside, hair sometimes works when everything else is damp. In my experience the longer between washes the better it catches and burns.

An aluminum pie plate in our garage is our firesteel testing ground. We've experimented with many materials. The dryer and fluffier the better. Milkweed, cattails and birch bark work very well, but birch bark is best if you scrape the inside of the bark into a powder.

I've never had success with grass or leaves. They're not hot enough and simply go out too soon, not allowing the fire to eat enough to sustain itself.

You are right. Starting a fire with a steel in good conditions is not always as easy as it looks. Add in some wind, humidity etc and the fire starting is that much more difficult. Like anything else, fire starting with a steel takes practice before you may ever need it and I always find it disconcerting when I see brand new and unused (un-tested) fire steels in people's kits.

Excellent reminder, Eastree! Welcome to the forum!

Thank you, bacpacjac!

So I did a bit more reading on the subject, and found a few more suggestions.

Samhain: Is there a ready source of Spanish moss you might be able to take a little? I know it's protected in some areas, but if you only snag a handful, you may be able to cram a bit in your pocket and it's not enough to adversely affect its local growth.

Also, cedar bark is very fibrous and easily shredded. When I was a kid, I played with some bark from one of my grandfather's trees. Given time, you can get it almost fluffy.

Either way, the general advice seems to be that not many things, as they occur in nature, will take a spark, and even fewer will respond like a fluffy cotton ball and flare up so easily. But some people out there have made some suggestions:

Distress the tinder into fibers (or finer fibers). Rubbing dry grasses in your hands is one method; shaving bark with a knife is another.

Also, some suggest stacking tinder in the nest (and some even suggest using a nest if one is available!), so it's a pocket progressing from the lightest and airiest possible fluff to catch the spark to progressively thicker materials which will ignite and continue burning.

This is the perfect example of why people need to carry firemaking materials with them, and why the results can be so disastrous if they don't.

I'm sure there are people who think they can easily start a fire with some dried grass or leaves by banging two rocks together to make a spark. Yeah, sure!

Sue

As I've gotten older I've stopped being a purist and messing around with the finer points of using natural tinder. If I need a fire I use a lighter. Instead of screwing around with flints and bows and char cloth, and twaddling around with a technique which might work if I keep working at it, I just get the job done.

Flick ... fire.

No, I'm not much of an old-time woodsman but I can get a fire going in seconds. At one time I was practiced with a bow and spindle and was pretty fair with a spark rod but lighters are faster, lighter, and more reliable.

especially if applied to a canister or liquid fuel stove...

I think we've all been there.

My "uh-oh" firelighting moment came after a day of dense fog. Pretty unusual around here. I couldn't get dry spruce twigs from under the tree going with a Bic; they were utterly saturated. A bit of lighter fluid finally got things going. But I earned a fair bit of humility that day. And a candle became standard kit always.

Since then, it's been a hobby to use things like thistle or cattail down to make a fire with the most feeble of sparks. In comparison, a modern firesteel is a godsend; the amount of heat generated is amazing. But pushing the envelope teaches the importance of slow, deliberate preparation; and I think that translates into a greater depth of skill when conditions are vile. Confidence, too.

BTW, making a friction (bowdrill) fire is on my bucket list. So far, smoke + blisters + cursing. Argh!

A Bic lighter is currently my ace, but still I've had one fail on me for no apparent reason and another one fail at high altitude. Some old wise dude said carry three fire starters. I'm comfortable carrying two good ones, a Bic lighter and a fire steel. The minute I get cocky about one is usually the same minute it fails.

Juniper bark, Cottonwood inner bark also work very well for a tinder bundle. If you have Pine trees in your area, you are sure to have some "fatwood" "pitchwood" or whatever you call it locally. It is the yellowish, hard, pitchfilled wood from an old stump or fallen tree. Where a branch joint was usually. Have someone that knows wood point out how to find some, it is all over in a pine forest. Shave some of that into a tinder nest and spark away, should take right off. You can buy fatwood at most grocery stores, it is used to help light fireplaces and usually on the isle with the charcoal and lighter fluid, comes in a package. That will let you practice lighting the fatwood. Hope that helps.

Around here the goal is to find what they call a "lightered" stump. Take a hatchet and knife, or a machete, with you and find an old, partly rotted, pine stump. Often you will see a section of the sump hasn't rotted or burned sticking up. You might need to dig it out a bit. Cut into the solid section and give it a sniff. What you should smell is some thing like turpentine or pine oil. Cut out a section big enough to liberate a matchstick size piece.

I like to hold the test piece in the pliers head on my Leatherman because burning pine resin is like napalm. If it gets on you it tends to melt on and take the skin with it. Touch a flame to it. The fire should catch very quickly and the piece should burn hot and for a long time for its size. The combination of strong smell, quick ignition and long hot burn tell you you have the real deal.

Chop out a goodly section. try to get a piece about the size of a small paperback book. Once you have your prize cover up any wood chips and signs of your being there. The exposed lightered wood, being a light color, shows up well so I cover it with branches or mud. Once you camouflage your find look around and make mental bores of where it is so you don't have to go hunting when you need more.

In much of the rural south people have their favorite lightered stumps and they keep them a secret. Often the location of a really good stump or stumps is handed down from generation to generation. Around here they aren't that rare, find some old pine stands that have been harvested or burned and there is almost always a one or two, but if you find one that is particularly good you still don't advertise it.

I've played with fire steels for a lot of years, since I was a kid I always thought they were neat. Pre-dating finding the magnesium, Doan's type fire steels, one of the earliest instructions I received was to slowly, carefully scrape the fire steel into the tinder. Once you have a little of the fire steel scrapings on the tinder then strike the steel normally. The little pile of dust sparks up and helps light the tinder. Essentially its like directing your sparks exactly where you want them to go. I've had success doing this on natural tinders though they are always harder to light.
Be ready thouggh, sometimes you end up sparking them before you're ready.

Dave