Ready,

I have a similar situation; I have 4 sons. They are 21, 14, and 11 year old twins. The oldest is an Eagle Scout and an engineering student at ASU. The 14 year old is a Life Scout. The twins have just crossed over to Boy Scouts. The three youngest are very interested in camping and outdoor skills.

I started with Coghlan’s Emergency Tinder and BSA Hot Sparks. They got Leatherman P4s and Cold Steel Voyagers for Christmas a few years ago. If they are not headed to school they do not like to leave home without a knife. We then moved on to scraped fatwood. We are now trying pine that has been shaved to thin strips and starting them with a ferro rod. We have switched to the County Comm Metal Match. I have pulled the ferro rod out of a Strike Force. For about $12.00 it is the best deal in ferro rods I have found.

One of the twins did a school science experiment on PJ cotton balls. The test was to see how long they burn. It was plain, surface coat, and saturated.

I also had my boys split some store bought firewood with a fixed blade. We used a Cold Steel Master Hunter, a Mora, a Cold Steel SRK, a Cold Steel True Flight Thrower, and a Cold Steel Trail Hawk. They all worked well except the Trail Hawk.