Originally Posted By: bacpacjac
I read somewhere, maybe here, that you can light the tabs with a ferro rod if you scrape them to make shavings/powder. I've never tried it, but fatwood and shoe fungus work the same way so it makes sense to me.



Esbit will light pretty easily if you scrape a pile of shavings as you would with a magnesium bar. In my tests the hexamine tablets from Coghlan's also could be lit in this manner. However, the "hexamine" tablets from Bluette were a no-go. I nearly wore my Ranger firesteel in two trying to light it with no luck. It lit with a naked flame from a match pretty readily though.

ESBIT is awesome stuff! It lasts nearly forever (I was told 50+ years...there's WWII stuff that's still usable) and burns hot. I always have some hexamine on me while camping. The smaller 4 gram sticks are also great.
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