I think I am going to move away from my mini kit and concentrate on something a little bigger. Here is my story? Has anyone come to the same decision I did?

OK, so there I was, in an emergency that required me to light a fire for my wife and I to sit by on a cool evening the other night. So I figured I had a few minutes to get it going, I would grab my mini PSK and give it another test in the back yard. So I went into the woods to get some tender and kindling. I scraped a cedar tree for some bark and grabbed a bunch of dead braches from the same tree and several around it and headed back to my deck to my chiminea. I had a log or two that I split for the evening and stripped a large chunk of bark off for a platform for my tender and kindling. I prepped my tender pile by crushing and grinding half of my bark as fine as I could make it and left the rest surrounding ?powder? with some tiny twigs to get a small fire going that I would transfer into my chiminea.

Well now to meat of the post. I opened my otterbox as a breeze picked up, blowing my Tinderquick pieces across my deck <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />. Mind you, I was squatting on my deck, and thankfully it was dry so I just picked them back up and stuffed them in my pocket so I wouldn?t lose them. Then I went digging for my BSA Hotspark. I got the flint out, but the striker was on the bottom of the box, so as I dug it out, I dropped it on the deck, and like magic, it was swallowed up by the crack between two boards <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />. Additionally, as I was digging it out, my four pieces of ?Write-Rain? paper flew out in the breeze as well. Not a very good start for my time with my wife, who was shaking her head at me through the window.

I did get a fire started, but only after having to use a piece of tenderquick and my Spyderco Native to make a spark big enough to get the piece ignited, but that is another story I am too ashamed of to mention.

This experience had me thinking, what if it had been raining? What if the wind had been blowing a little harder? What if my hands had been colder? My little kit would have been very difficult to use with much success at all. I worked very hard to find small items to outfit my kit and conserve space for stuff like wire, tinderquick, a button compass (which I discovered had an air bubble in it), and a pinch light, yet, I would have lost some of the most important pieces in there if I had spilled the thing over!

What is my bottom line on this little experience? I think I am going to move away from my mini-kit and concentrate on my larger kit. I am always carrying my pack with me almost everywhere, and my minimum carry is good enough for the first night out of doors in most places I go on a routine basis.

So I ask this esteemed group: why struggle with your huge mitts in a tiny little case when you have a large one with adult sized items in it?

Garrett