I have a little experience and have had a little sucess making sparks by striking to rocks together or by striking a stainless steel knife to a rock but I'm talking about teeny tiny sparks. The way I understand it is that the software the metal, the more spark you get when striking it with a hard quartz-type flint rock. I'm very much about dual use items so my steel needs to be my knife as well, otherwise I could just use another rock (one with decent about of iron). As I have already mentioned, stainless steel givesme the very tiniest of spark on the rare occasions that it sparks at all. So decided to go with a knife made of softer steel and also one that was cheap enough that I could bang on it all day with rocks without bursting out in to tears. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Well I though the Frost Mora would be the perfect fit but it is not. The carbon steel Mora produces little more spark than the stainless steel did.

Could this be beacuse I bought the "laminated" version of the Mora blade steel?

OW c'mon,that's how you treat your knives? knives are meant for cutting things- soft things preferably and not to be struck against rocks.

Here's a link to Ragnar's site telling the whole story about "strikers"

http://www.ragweedforge.com/striking.html

Moras are not made to be babied <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> If Mors Kochanski practises striking sparks with a carbon steel Mora, it's good enough for me <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

You have the wrong equipment. Steel and flint sparking involves a very hard, finegrained stone and a HIGH CARBON and HIGH ROCKWELL steel. The stone impacts steel, igniting and detaching carbon molecules. Stainless steel with low carbon simply doesn't have the molecular tinder. Soft steel will merely allow the flint to gouge into the material. This is exactly the same process in a flintlock action. Traditional strikers are forged from high carbon steel and in the forging the carbon is actually concentrated to a greater degree. Your laminate Frosts has the right steel, but it's sandwiched between two soft layers. The cheapo, red handled carbon Mora's work far better, high carbon , Rockwell, and the eventual pitting of the spine won't hurt your aesthetic or financial values.