But, you'll note that Cody clearly prefers an unnamed lighter brand other than Bic. I've found several lighters that look similar to the one he describes, but never knew what, if any, the brand is.
That's true. It's been a while since I read the book but I believe his reasons for that are that it's flat and it has an adjustable flame (primarily the latter IIRC).
I have to admit I worry about the "complexity" of the sparklite relative to the simple rods. I worry that the wheel might not work, or the flint might not work. It seems that the rods are simpler and most likely to work - though usually requiring two hands and slightly more difficult to target the tinder.
I have the same concerns about the sparklight and I know from previous threads that others do as well. I am a big fan of plain 'ole ferrocerium rods also but I'm not so skilled at one-handed lighting like Paul so I stick with the Spark Lite for now. Also, though I do have fears regarding the durrablility of the plastic in the Spark Lites, I haven't had one fail yet and I have used them pretty hard, dropped them many times and even modified one or two. Just the same if I could do the fancy finger work like Paul then I would probably stick with just the ferrocerium rod. The other advantage of the Spark Lite is that it is so easy to target that you can light almost anything with it. There are links in an older thread here on the forums to some videos I made about 6 months ago where I light all kinds of stuff with the Spark Lite... a piece of a cotton t-shirt, a piece of a paper towel, natural tinder of some type and a few other items as well. The main thing I remember from that experiment is that with the materials that are normally hard to light, my success in lighting them with the Spark Lite was due almost entirely to the ability to focus the spark exactly where I wanted it to be, down to within a couple milimeters. I just can't get that accurate with a knife and a small ferrocerium rod (not yet anyway).
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