I find my Coghaln’s mag. block to be a good choice. Not ideal, but very good. I would say its valuable advantage is that you don´t carry tinder and rod separately.

Another advantage is that once the spark hits the magnesium shavings you get a flame. This becomes important during freezing temperatures. Last year in winter it took me suprisingly long to light very fine pieces of birch bark using Strike Force because the tinder was very cold. I believe If I had used a bit of magnesium shavings I could have had a fire in no time. Magnesium just reacts immediatelly.

When it comes to long burning tinder, magnesium (from the Coghlan’s block) is not good at all but like I said it is an excellent accelerator and I use it as that (ferrocerium rod -> spark -> magnesium shavings as accelerator -> tinder -> kindling -> gathered wood (even wet).

The wind can be a problem. The cotton balls, Tinder-Quik etc. can be pierced with a piece of twig and pinned down to the ground and so on. So I agree that in windy conditions you could be better off with something different than mag. shavings but it´s doable.

In winter I would take Strike Force as my nr. 1 firestarter (it has quite long burning tinder cube inside) though. Sometimes you don´t have time for scraping magnesium and making sure it won´t blow away (for example when you fall through the ice and need fire immediately).



Good story, thanks for sharing it. It´s good to hear that having the mag. block saved the day. However I think if you had had for example Strike Force with you, its tinder cube inside the handle would have solved the problem in less than one minute . That´s why I like it so much. It pays to carry one at least in the backpack. I reccomend checking it out. Or check out their tinder (named WetFire) - you could carry at least the tinder cube in addition to mag. block. Like I said for me the mag. is mainly an accelerator rather than regular tinder. But it´s just my personal preference.