Hi Frank2135,

Thanks for the link to Dixie Gun Works, I did not know "nodules of flint" were even available for sale. The difficulty is that for a private citizen to import anything firearm related into Canada is a big hassle. I think I will just have to buy a small piece of flint at a gun shop in Ontario, so I can experiment with it. I have seen flint struck in survival movies and it produced a lot more and hotter sparks than my local quartz. The native people of Southern Ontario used chert (another type of mineral quartz) but I have had very poor results producing a spark with it, I will have to work with it some more.

I think the confusion comes from people and marketing companies refering to ferrocium rod as "flint" when actually it is not, it is a man-made, artifical product. It is like calling the black middle of a pencil "lead" when really it is made of graphite/clay.

The only time I have used char cloth is to catch the "colder" sparks produced by traditional flint (quartz in my case) and carbon steel.

In the past I would guess that people would make a fire by the friction method (bow-drill) or catch a spark on natural tinder like Tinder Fungus. They would then make a batch of char cloth and after that use the char cloth to catch the sparks from natural flint stone and carbon steel. Remember they also needed high heat(fire) to produce the carbon steel? In Neolithic times they did not have linen to make char cloth or carbon steel, they used flint, iron pyrite and tinder fungus (amadou) to produce fire.

The thing I like best about artifical flint (call it, ferrocium rod, firesteel or magnesium block) is that if it gets wet you just wipe it off and strike sparks with it immediately. If I remember correctly it takes about 200 flicks of a Bic to dry out the striker wheel of a lighter? Some waterproof matches are effective, some not so good after getting wet. Both lighters and matches are also effected by high winds, usually sparks are not and the more wind on a coal in a tinder bundle the quicker it ignites.

I have frequently used an artifical flint rod (usually a Light-My-Fire Scout model) to ignite natural tinder. Mostly I use shredded white birch bark, but sometines I use cedar bark or tinder fungus. I usually scrape the artifical flint rod with whatever sharp edge I have on me, often one of the non-cutting blades of my multi-tool, as using the main blade is hard on the edge. Any Ray Mears or Michel Blomgren video shows them lighting natural tinder with an articical flint rod.

I just tested scraping a Primus Firesteel with both a 1095 carbon steel blade (Ontario Brand "Old Hickory" kitchen knife) and a low carbon/high chromium stainless steel blade (Rapala Filleting Knife). I could not detect any difference in the amount of hot sparks produced. What does produce a significantly greater amount of sparks it to hold the sharp edge firmly and scrape the artifical flint rod under it. This not only produces more sparks, it is easier to direct them onto the tinder and you do not scatter you tinder with the follow-thru of your scraper hand.

Interesting topic L.W. glad you brought it up.

Mike