I had a new fire making experience. This may be common knowledge to many but it is new for me. I had a piece of pinewood left over from making Pinewood Derby cars for my twins in Cub Scouts. I was testing/enjoying the sharpness of my Cold Steel True Flight Thrower. This is a knife I filed the black finish off of the sides of the blade and put some effort into sharpening. I was carving very thin curls of wood off of the pine wood block. I believe the MagFire website has a picture of something similar. I put some in a fire safe place and tried my ferro rod on it. After several large showers of sparks the curls started to have a glowing ember. I blew on it and it burst into flame. I thought that was exciting so I had my son, in the Boy Scouts, check it out. I made some more curls and more showers of sparks. Once again I got a glowing ember and blew it into a flame. It seems to follow that if you have some dry softwood and a sharp knife that you could make thin curls and start a fire with a ferro rod.

Has anyone else tried this?

I have had good success with the Swedish firesteel but the Doans Magnesium block could not get the same results without using the magnesium.

Yes I've done it w/ fatwood. I used the back of my knife to shave very fine curls of fatwood and then I usually can get it started w/ one strike from my firesteel.

Adam

Fatwood is easy. I'm talking about plain pine wood.

Absolutely! Pretty cool huh. The finer the curls the easier they catch. There's fuel in most woods (resins) so yes, this is a good method to know.

Next time I run out of fatwood I'll be sure to give it a try. <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Adam

This is a method that has been popularised over here by Ray Mears. He has a friend in Sweden by the name of Lars Fált. Instructs the Swedish military amonst others in survival techniques. He felt that the traditional small stick found in most survival packs was somewhat lacking (now there's an understatement for you), so he designed the swedish firestick that most people now use. However, there is a trick to using it. The uninitiated hold the firestick and stroke the knife down the stick, big shower of sparks. Great. Magic. Real spectacular. Problem: no fire. Most of the sparks have fallen short of the target. Great. Now here's the trick: Hold the knife firmly very close and parallel to the tinder and draw the firestick back against the blade. This concentrates the spark's onto the tinder. Gives a much better chance of ignition. Tinderwise, any fine dry wood etc will ignite. Silver Birch is the best choice if you can obtain it.

Pencil sharpener to the rescue!

I had everyone in my family (6) successfully start a fire by whittling some pine curls and using a ferro rod to start a fire. We used store bought fire wood and pine blocks. I'm not sure what I was doing the first two times. Now the curls just start burning once we hit them with a good shower of sparks. It seems you need a big enough pile so that your sparks will find some wood curls to hit. A handful seems plenty.

Here is my current thinking of fires:
If there is wood and you have a saw you have fuel
If there is fuel and you have a fixed blade you have kindling
If you have kindling, a sharp knife and a ferro rod you have fire.

ergo: if there is wood and you have a saw, fixed blade knife and a ferro rod you can start a fire. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I was looking for some shaving nick powder one day at a barber/beauty shop and noticed that they had pencil sharpeners for some type of cosmetic pencil. These sharpeners actually are two-in-one for sharpening two different sizes of pencils. The smaller size corresponds to what I would call a normal sized pencil and the second size will accept a pencil about twice as large. I bought a plastic one and cut off the sharpener for the smaller pencil. Hopefully, the larger sharpener would make wood curls from slightly larger twigs. Does someone make a sharpener for those large, hand-crippling pencils they made us use in the first grade?