TofuSoleSurvivor,
Try a little 000 steel wool, dry, all by itself with no magnesium. Of course, have your dry tinder and kindling at the ready. See if your Dad will bet against you on this one.

Take your steel wool (extra-fine "000" or "0000" is best), and pull off several wispy strands. Don;t just take a big bunch, but pull off a good little amount. Bunch it together, but leave it somewhat wispy for airflow. Using your striker, get some good sparks onto the steel wool, then gently blow (loooong gentle breaths) as your hands gently push your tinder down onto the wool. The wool might develop a flame, but more often than not, it will burn in hot embers.... more than enough to light your tinder. Now, if you find the wool doesn't burn hot or long enough to light the tinder, maybe you made it too wispy. Next practice attempt, use more wispy strands and rebunch them a little tighter together. This works even if the wool is damp (as if it got wet and you shook it off and blew on it to try and dry it), but save the wet attempts for later. I've praticed enough to where I'm confident I can do this inside of 2 minutes even on a blustery day, and you can too after a few practice attempts. And believe me, I'm no mountain man! Maybe you can try it a time or two, know you can do it, then show your dad.

Matches and lighters are great, I use them too. But judging by your first post, you're trying to go the hard way, which is good, because we don;t always have the other methods. So maybe give some thought to the steel wool method.

Good luck

+1 for no magnesium. A large ferro rod and treated cotton tinder is the way to go! <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

I'm not a big fan of the magnesium fire starters. When you're cold or wet or its dark is no time scrape a whole lot of magnesium bits or keep a little pile of magnesium together in the wind. I'd rather take a ferrocerium rod and carry alcohol swabs, fine steel wool or waxed/vaselined cotton balls. They light easier, and are easier to prepare. The magnesium bars work, but they're one of my least favorite tinders. Nifty sounding ideas, but one hellva pain to use.

Let's face it, people.

Magnesium fire-starters are crap...

I use Coghlan's Emergency Tinder and a Fire-Steel

I am not a fan of magnesium either. I use a Swedish FireSteel, and plain old dryer lint.
I pack the dryer lint into a Water proof match canister. It's amazing how much that stuff compresses.

I've tried it under controlled conditions (RV camping with my parents, sister's family and her nieces) and was astonished at how difficult it was to keep the magnesium together and to get the sparks onto it.

I now consider the magnesium bar as a handle, not tinder.

I altered my kits to have a firesteel and good tinder.

This is the sort of thing the forum is so good for. Many ideas seem wonderful but they must be tested to prove them.

Unimogbert

Here's what works for me:

Don't bother trying to make a pile of magnesium shavings. Even if you do manage to keep it together, it burns so fast that by the time you drop the scraper and pick up your first piece of tinder, its too late.

Instead, use a bundle of finely shredded tinder material such as cedar bark. Make a small hole in it with your thumb and scrape some magnesium into this spot. You don't need too much.

Now rest the end of the firestarter near the hole and strike a spark. The spark lights the magnesium which lights the tinder. A few puffs and off you go.

I dunno what the fuss is with magnesium firestarter vs. firesteel - the magnesium is just extra tinder. If you don't like it, use it as a handle as Unimobert says.

I pried the ferro rod out of mine, trimmed 1/4" or so off the end, and stuck it inside the handle of my Becker Brute. It was the perfect size.

I have a magnesium bar plus flint firestarter and I don't really like it either. I do keep one in my first aid kit as a last ditch fire strarter.

To me, a Swedish fire steel with tinder is superior. I like the spark-lite tabs, cotton and vaseline, wet fire tinder, esbit fuel tabs, and fatwood better than the magnesium. I also carry a "tinder bag" basically a large zip lock that found tinder, like dry bark, goes into.

It's amazing how quickly you can get a fire started if you prepare first. On our last camping trip, everything was pretty wet and one of the dads there didn't think I would be able to get a fre started. A tinder bundle of crumpled up bark with a vaseline cotton ball in the middle with a couple of pieces of fatwood to dry out the kindling and our campfire was born in minutes. I had a huge pile of kindling standing by and three piles of firewood. Despite they heavy damp, we had our fire from mid-afternoon until everyone finally went to bed around midnight.

I don't know why people have so many problems using the mag bars. I've lit dozens of fires with them and never had much of a problem.

First off, I do use a piece of old hacksaw blade (the cheaper the better, the bimetal blades don't work as well as HS steel) with the teeth ground off. I scrape the shavings into a dried leaf or a wad of fine textured dried grass. You can even take bigger dead grass and rub it over a stick, or just beat it with a stick or rock. It'll break down the fibers so you can get a wad of wispy, hair like grass fibers. I don't scrape off a lot of magnesium, just enough to get a dusting maybe an inch square. Don't even really care if it's in a pile or not, just so it's caught up in the grass.

The best way to scrape the striker is to have the bar braced to the ground or on a rock at about a 45 degree angle with the wad of tinder under the corner that's lifted. When you strike the flint, put the hacksaw scaper firmly on the flint rod and scrape down firmly like you were trying to gouge it out. I've seen people doing a fast freehand scrape and they will only get a light shower of sparks. If you bear down firmly, more like you did to scrape the magnesium shavings, you'll get a heavy shower of hot sparks. If your tinder is really dry, you don't even need the magnesium.

The other method is to brace your hand holding the hacksaw scraper on the ground and pull the magnesium bar up. That works fine too, but I think the real trick is to do it firmly, and not the wild hitting striking at the flint thing. A little puff on the wad of grass and you'll have it flaming, ready to add to the tender.