More White On The Strike Anywheres!!!!

on this and other outdoor sites there have been complaints
on how chinzy the match companys had become, reducing the amount of whatever that white chemical is on the strike anywhere match tips.well i picked up a couple box's of Diamond kitchen matches and i see thay now have a blurb on the cover
about their "new look"--the picture shows match heads with lots of white on the tips-- i have no idea of what drove them to beat the bean counters into comming up with a few thousand more gallons to coat the tips but they did the right thing.
a second bit on the cover brags up the "Diamond ignition system"--i had no idea that so many people were still using these big wood matches that the company would react to consumers and bring back the original product.

Even 20 years ago when I started packing my kits, half of the matches went in a jar just for the wood stove. Fine for home, but unfit for the field.

And yes, I had to have someone buy my matches for me at that age. :P

The wooden matches market may be a small market, but it is a market that could flare up at any moment!
(Sorry, couldn't resist that line)

Yes it is a surprise somebody got through to the bean counters that being cheap was costing them market share.
It was likely somebody from marketing and accounting working together to over ride the cut costs at all costs mantra.
You can bet it wasn't charity driving the decision.

Yes it is red phosphorus they use not white.
They are both forms of phosphorus, just the atoms are arranged different in the crystal. White is far more toxic while red is not absorbed by the body as much.

Here is an excerpt about why they quit using white Phosphorus in matches.


The numbers in brackets are for the footnotes at the bottom of the full article page.

Hah, back when we were kids, we discovered that the strike anywhere matches would just fit in the barrels of our pump pellet guns, and when fired at a hard surface from a short distance, would snap like a cap and ignite. This led to the discovery that match heads could be used as a propellant, and could detonate inside a cavity when impacted. Eventually, we invented our own form of a mortar by drilling out the end of 5/8" rebar and placing a set number of match heads inside the cavity and inserting a bolt that would smash the match heads when the rebar was dropped onto a hard concrete surface, namely our driveway. We used a 5' long piece of two inch galvanized pipe as the mortar tube, and created a few rebar rounds and proceeded to launch our deadly little projectiles into the adjacent semi wooded area next to our house. The detonation was just soft enough that no one in the neighborhood detected it, and we usually found most of the rebar that we fired.

One day a neighbor kid suggested we make a bigger version and use more match heads and see what happens. So throwing good sense completely out the window, we got a longer piece of rebar, drilled the hole much deeper in the end, and packed a whole lot of match heads into it. When that rebar hit the concrete, it went off with a loud whack, and the rebar, which we could normally track as it left the tube, left our location for parts unknown, and none of us having a clue where. That wasn't the worst of it, for the bolt that was in the end of the rebar was now stuck deeply into the driveway, and the concrete had a spiderweb pattern of cracks radiating away from the impact point.

Needless to say, when dad got home, we got inquisited (dad always seemed to know that such damage was usually the result of our misbehaving). We had to come clean and got hided good for it, and sent to the wood pile for a couple weeks.

Then there was the time we tried to make little rockets out of match heads and tin foil, and ended up starting a mini forest fire behind our house. We lost a lotta hide back then...

This story sounds more like something Blast would be responsible for.

I think we all have our little destructive stories from youth.

...leads to great childhood memories, doesn't it?

Some pretty good adult times, too.

-Blast, learning he isn't alone

i hope anyone foolish enought to try tricks with match heads uses paper safety matches--using a strike anywhere will lead to a flare-up the second you try and force them into a pipe.
yes--as a kid i did stuff like that but i don't want to give any details and have a 10 year old read this and blow a finger off..the point to my post was that wood kitchen matches are now made better for survival use.----hummm..thats sounds a bit grumpy--but i'm only my first cup of AM coffee....and don't drink coffee kids it will stunt your growth!!!!

I just picked up three boxes of Diamond strike anywhere matches with the new look logo on the box. Compared to the previous version, they look the same with worse quality control. In other words, no discernible improvement and may even worse quality than before. Nice "new look"...

Am I the only one who read the title and thought it was worded a bit weird? I mean my brain processed "More whites on the strike than anywhere" and I was thinking.. more white people on strike than before? Huh...

hahaha

So a simple marketing play on the package graphics.
Well! That just burns me up!

Scafool, you're just being a hot head now.

The "White stuff" by the way is Sesquisulfide of Phosphorus, as noted above a less lethal derivative of Phosphorus.

"..the tip of the match contains Sesquisulfide of Phosphorus and the rest of the head a burning agent..."

I've been very happy with Penley brand SA matches. Their quality control is far better the the Diamond brand matches, IMHO.

I guess you guys can't get good matches like Redbird or Eddy Lights by the Eddy Match Company.
Ahem, No good strike anywhere matches, it must be rough.

Where do you get Diamond Strike Anywhere Matches? I haven't seen them anywhere.

On a backpacking trip to Big Bend National Park a couple years ago, our group was sitting down to dinner. One person always took a set of matches in one of the orange coghlan containers, but I cannot remember if they were strike anywhere or REI micro torches. She took one match out and began screwing on the cap. When she screwed on the cap, one or more matches rubbed against the striker she had also stored in the same container. She didn't notice it had ignited and she screwed the cap tightly. Out of the corner of my eye I had noticed a small whiff of smoke. She was sitting across from me in a circle of us. A few seconds later she noticed the container was smoking and threw it into the middle of the circle. The container then BLEW..lol and neither the cap nor container were ever found.

match brands must be regional like flour and canned goods.
in Minnesota it seems to be Diamond and Blue Tip.i have seen Redbird in Canada.

It seems to change with the Province too. Almost all the wooden matches made in Canada are actually made by the E.B. Eddy Company no matter what the trade name on the box is. Eddy light matches were more common in Ontario and had a picture of a light house (the Eddystone Lighthouse) on the striped box.

Wooden matches are not very good in a personal or hiking kit for a lot of reasons but are very good to have as household supplies, especially if you use wood or coal for heat.

scafool, I agree with you that in most respects matches are not the best choice anymore if one has limited space. They are single use items and unless waterproofed can be completely useless. That said, in all my little kits (I've made up four, one for each vehicle and one in the house) from a belt pouch kit to a full daypack I've included at least a few strike anywhere matches wrapped in foil in my fire starting pouches. If the weather is good, that's what I'll use first to make a small fire to have some tea. If the weather is wet, I have other choices but then unless I got stuck, I'm a fair weather hiker anyway.

Matches are still the easiest fire starters to use in reasonable weather. Sparkers are the most reliable (firesteels, mag bars, Blastmatch, Spark-Lite, etc,) especially in bad weather.

Actually CSG, taking up space is not the reason.
I don't like them for emergency kit because I had some go off in my pocket once about 35 years ago.
If it wasn't for that I would likely do as you do.

(Yes, I still remember the event.)

Yikes! I carry no more than ten in a foil flatpack. I lay them opposite end to end. With a tight foil wrap and head to base pack, I'm not worried about spontaneous combustion.

It's already a pain for folks to stock up on family cold meds. You are viewed with suspicion.

Also, where I live the local govt recycling program got rid of the battery buckets at the drop off locations (most recycling locations) because they said they didn't want to provide a raw material for meth makers. Now one has to take them to a manned drop off center (poor hours and only a few in the entire county). The end result is that in most areas of the county where you can't recycle them, most people just throw them away. When they're in the alley garbage it pretty much makes them available anyway.