I agree that shaving the magnesium is a real pain. There is unfortuantely no easier way to shave the block besides, well, shaving ;-). I use the back of my lockback knife to do the shaving and striking my flint rod.<br>I usually use a small piece of foil and (try) put all my shavings on it so that it will form a neat pile (or a big leaf will do) as trying to get the shavings from the ground is darn near impossible.<br>The bigger the pile the better the flash fire for your tinder.<br>But I still prefer the spark-lite and its copy... :-)<br>MFS is too tiring to use.....<br><br>