Firesteel vs. Natural Tinder

I use the scout and dryer lint. 1 oz of dryer lint really goes far.

I've used crumpled up, sort of hand ground dry birch bark. Shoot the sparks at the dust made by grinding.

I've been able to use the firesteel from the side of a magneesium block (3/16" x 3" with 2" of useable rod beyond the handle) to light dry meadow grass, crumpled birch bark and also shavings from a whittled birch branch.

Stripping off the inner bark from a Cedar tree and crumpling it until it's stringy & has some powder will suppossedly allowed it to light with a spark also. I also hear that the stringy "old mans beard" lichen that grows in the Northwest and Canada works well when dried with some body heat overnight. Plus I hear that the white fibers inside "cat-tail" weeds works well if it's dry, but doesn't put out much heat, so your kindling needs to be extra thin.

So, it's possible to make fire from a firesteel with natural tinder – but unfortunately it's really hard to find birch and cedar trees in the forests in my area, old-mans-beard doesn't seem to grow here at all, and cat tails only seem to grow around county owned ponds…

Has anyone else had any luck with shavings from "any old tree" – or something else that is easy to find ? Did it matter much if it was a hardwood, softwood or pine tree ? Does it still work when it's been raining ?

Thanks.

ps: The birch shavings needed to be thin and required me to rapidly and repeatedly stroke the firesteel with the striker so that a continuous stream of sparks showered the shavings for approximately 20-25 seconds.

I couldn't get pine needles to light with a firesteel – even when the pine needles were allowed to dry overnight.

"ps: The birch shavings needed to be thin and required me to rapidly and repeatedly stroke the firesteel with the striker so that a continuous stream of sparks showered the shavings for approximately 20-25 seconds. "

You do know that, for most sparkers, it's better to pull the ferrocerum rod backwards across the steel striker than to move the striker, right?

I've heard that, but I think it's mainly to keep the striker from accidentally hitting and scattering the pile of tinder. I only do it that way when using magnesium dust shaved from the block as tinder.

Pulling the rod back while holding the striker still only generated about 2/3 the number of sparks for me as holding the rod steady and stoking the striker forward.

ps: Shaving magnesium from the block takes a long, long time with a knife. So long, that I consider it not feasible for daily cooking usage. I hear a saw from a leatherman or swiss army knife works much better. I tried a piece of hacksaw blade. It didn't work much better than the knife for me.

Tinder tabs or vasilene covered cotton balls make the most convienent tinder. They are water resistent and burst into flame on contact with sparks as well as hold that flame for a resonable time.
Most natural tinders use a more indirect method to get a flame. Tinder fungus is probably the best ( Im talking about temprate-boreal enviro.). It holds a nice coal and if the wind blows on it, it only gets bigger. This you put on some fine kindling and blow or rock into the wind untill you get fire. This is the same method used when making a friction fire- the wood dust builds up and then is ignited into a coal. Punky ( rotten ) dry wood dust, birch bark shavings and others can be used but are not as easy. Very few things in the woods besides these will work by spark alone. Cut the tinder into thin slices or crush into fine dust. All tinders should be dried.

– There are basiclly 2 ways to use the firesteels.
1 stand over your tinder and forcefully make sparks drop all the way to the ground onto your tinder – most people will find pushing the striker easier in this method. Youll know if you have good sparks if you can get them to "dance" or bounce on the ground in practice.
2 hold the fire steel close and pull the firesteel back keeping the striker still. This is best when you have small amounts of tinder or if you just prefer to do it this way as a little less force is nessasary.

Just my two cents, but carrying matches or a lighter just seem to make better sense to me, since either will light tinder faster than a spark.

The spark lite tabs work well and are very light. Vaseline soaked cotton balls also work well, but aren't as light. I've considered switching to a small container of vaseline & some dry cotton balls though, due to the multi-use aspect of being able to use the vaseline for chapped lips, skin irriations, etc.

Yes, I carry matches because they are easy.
But, tinder/firesteel has the advantage of being water proof. You also cant run out of firesteel like you can run out of matches. Its just an added saftey margin which is why I carry both -most of the time.
Also, I know what you are trying to say but, the matches or lighter dont light the tinder any faster, in fact the advantage of matches is that you dont need tinder at all just some fine kindling.

Oh. Don't forget. Lighting a fire with a firesteel is just more fun.

I think Bear Grylls uses the scout.

First of all, I carry a firesteel as a backup to a mini Bic or matches and I also carry a spy capsule jammed full of Tinder Quick tabs. Other fire starting backups are an Esbit tab and my alcohol gel hand cleaner. You can pull lint from your socks, hat or fleece, or even use some polyester fill in an emergency.

In use, I put the end of the firesteel right down on the tinder and strike down to it. I normally use a knife rather than the scrapers sold with the steels. A broken off hacksaw blade makes a good scraper too. My survival lanyard has a Victorinox Classic and a firesteel along with the spy capsule (along with a micro LED, whistle and compass). The larger steels are are easier to hang onto and last longer, but you can still get a good steam of sparks off the smaller ones. They do work better once you get through the coating and a flat develops. I find most people try to scrape really fast, which isn't necessary– a slower stroke can produce more sparks.

Tinder needs to be as dry as possible. Carrying dry tinder is a smart thing to do. I have used Tinder Quick tabs as a backup as they are prepared and can be very compact. Dryer lint works and is about as cheap and easy as it gets. You can jam some in a small bottle for safekeeping– I have used prescription pill bottles. Vaselined cotton balls work very well and burn long enough to give you all kinds of time to pile on smaller sticks and shavings. Likewise Esbit tabs, which burn really hot. For a real lazy method, put a dab of alcohol get hand cleaner on a fuel tab and give it a strike with the firesteel– it will take right off. Don't completely depend on such methods as you might not have them available when you really need them.

Others listed natural tinder sources. Finding sticks and shaving them down to drier inner wood is what I usually end up doing. The outer parts of dead wood may be wet, but the inner parts can be dry. You can shave a stick down with a smaller knife, or you can baton a larger knife through a piece of wood to get it down to kindling size and the drier inner wood. Learning to make fuzz sticks is a part of bushcraft and is a time honored way to teach knife and fire starting skills– it's a Boy Scout thang for sure.

Fatwood is another natural tinder source. You can carry some with you or you may get lucky and find a fatwood stump in your travels. Fatwood is typically a pine stump where the resins have collected. You can buy commercially packaged versions.

Brett said, "I think Bear Grylls uses the scout."

Using Bear G as an example for good survival skills is like using Rush Limbaugh as an intellectual reference :)

I love to watch him bash his only knife with a rock when there is wood all around him, not to mention free climbing waterfalls and squeezing elephant dung for water. Pul-ease!

John G.

Since all the replies to this point have been positive, I felt compelled to offer an opposing point of view.

I bought the Firesteel Scout and the only reason I didn't throw it off a cliff when I tried it, was because I wasn't anywhere near a cliff!

Obviously, many have had success with method of combustion but I personally and Firesteel challenged!

Mini-Bic … keep it in your pocket in cold weather.

I find the FS useful. When I first tried lighting natural tinder with the small steel I had a lot of problems and could never really get a consistent result. It always worked great with all of pre-prepared tinder, however. I rethought things and decided that I needed to create some _really_ fine tinder. He's what seems to work consistently for me: use a dried branch to create a couple piles of progressively smaller shavings (this is where I had previously stopped). Find a nice semi-flat chunk of dried wood, or split (baton) a 2 or 3" piece to create a flat, dry, base to build the fire on, and to protect the tinder from the cold ground. (If it's long, you can put your foot on the end of it to stabilize it.) Then, to create the really fine stuff — powder almost, if you like — I use a technique similar to what machinists call draw filing, I think. Draw filing is where you place the file perpendicular-ish to your workpiece and just draw it straight along the length. It removes previous file marks and makes a fine finish.

I don't know if I can adequately describe this but I think you can experiment a little and discover what I mean. You position the blade of your knife ~20-30deg from perpendicular to the axis of the stick (that is, the tip of the blade 20 deg towards your hand, not the far end of the stick) and draw down. The cutting angle of the blade would be ~10 deg back (opposite of the normal slicing angle). Experiment with the angle and pressure and you should be able to either create some fine powder or ideally, some really fine curls. In either case, thats what exactly what you need. I think a sharp edge might be a requirement for this to work. Since this probably isn't great for the blade edge I try to use as small of area on the blade as possible. It shouldn't really dull a quality knife blade significantly. Lessor steels would likely suffer more.

Build up your pile — it doesn't take much — then place some of the finer shavings on top of that. Now I place the FS right on top of the lower 1/3 of the pile, and push down hard so as not to dislodge the filings. I usually use the END of the FS striker and I only use about the bottom 1/2 of the FS (3/4-1"). Now go up and down and just grind the s**t out it. If it doesn't take right off (5-10 seconds) you probably need a little more powder/curls or to try a different piece of wood.

(Hope this wasn't too long winded, but I would have found the detail useful before I figured it out!)

Jes' love dem Vaseline-infused cotton balls! Dey blaze up like crazy.

For a long-lasting wet weather firestarter I've used the Vaseline/coton ball starter to light a "waxed newspaper" roll.
1.You tightly roll up newspaper 'til it is about 1" in diameter, tie the roll W/ cotton cord every 2" then hacksaw or bandsaw them evenly between the tied strings.

2.Melt several blocks of canning parrifin (or several old candles) in an old pot slowly, being careful NOT to make the wax smoke.

3. Dip the rolled sections of newspaper in the wax until they are totally saturated then spoon them out to cool on a sheet of metal or old pizza pan.

These wax rolls will start even damp wood B/C they burn a LONG time. You may also blow them out & reuse them if you can retrieve them from the fire. Once used they are even easier to light the second time.

Eric

I have just recently started using jute twine as a firestarter with my flint. I cut off the lanyard that came with it and replaced it with a decent length of jute twine so I can wear the flint around my neck. Then when it's time to start a fire, just cut off a very small length (say 3/4 of an inch) of the twine and completely unravel all of the strands. Fluff this into a nice ball and place this in the middle or around the natural firestarter in your locale, like oldman's beard. All it takes is one strike with the flint and the twine just goes off. You need to use the brownish jute twine. It works so well I have considered replacing the cords in one or two of my silnylon stuff sacks with jute twine.

It was a joke because the guy is one.

But the sparker they give you is a piece of crap so just use your knife.

Yep, you sure can start a fire with a firesteel and natural tinder. When I started into the survival/ bushcraft thing I really started working on my firebuilding skills. Materials that work well in areas that I live, and hike in most of the time are; 1) Birch 2) Ceder (Red or White). When using the bark of these tree, the pieces must be REALLY THIN, I mean close to hair thin. Otherwise you need some type of igniter, like cotton balls in vasilone or char cloth, or…well you get the idea.

I've found that the seedlings (the puffy white down looking things) of catails work VERY well. Although you MUST be ready with you kindlin, tinder and fuel before you ignite the catails, as the burn very quickly. Something I would suggest is making a robins nest out of long straw type grass and put your catail in the center of the robin's nest.

Oh yea, patience is required when learning how to start a fire with natural igniters and a firesteel (or any type of sparker). Now the next step….Bow and drill (I still have a REALLY hard time with that one.)

As for the difference between the scout and army models is the thickness of the model, not the temp output of the sparks (I could be wrong). Just the Army model has a long working lifespan than the scout (but not really needed unless you use it every day). Ill see if I find a movies to show you. Good Luck and remeber, have fun!

for using a lighter, remove the childproof thingy with some pliers. So much more usable with cold hands, gloves even

I was about to post a similar question because I was having trouble with the firesteel and natural tinder. After reading this post and some others I found on this subject from doing a search I don't feel so bad now. At first I thought I was just a moron who couldn't figure out how to use the firesteel properly.

I recently bought a Bushbuddy. Along with it I bought a firesteel and some of the tinder tabs as I wanted to learn how to start a fire without using something "easy" like a lighter. I have tried the Bushbuddy out a couple of times in my back yard, and both times I tried to light it using the firesteel.

The first time I tried the firesteel with some dried grass, crumbled up leaves and wood shavings to no avail. I then "cheated" with a tinder tab. The tinder tab lit up right away (only took a couple of scrapes on the firesteel), and got the stove going.

The second time I tried using bark (in thin strips and crushed up to where the fibers were exposed) from dead braches off of a hardwood, crushed leaves and wood shavings. After scraping the crap out of the firesteel (I think it is about 1/3 used up already) I actually got it to light. The only problem I had after that is I didn't have a large enough pile of tinder, and it all burned out before the wood got going well. So I "cheated" again, and again the tinder tab lit right up and got the stove going.

So at any rate, it appears that something dry with small fibers exposed will work. Obviously I am no expert though, and I plan to take some of the tips I have found in this post and other similar posts to refine my fire making skills (which seem to be pretty poor at the moment).

I find fire steels very easy to use. Here is a video of one of my 1/4" thick pieces in use:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeqmAkB5P9A

You can see in the video it produces nice thick globs of molten metal. This will light any tinder fairly easy. you can make tinder out of almost anything that is dry, and if it has rained, you can scrape the bark of a tree until you get to the inside that is dry and use that. Theres a reason why these were develope by the british special forces, they are very reliable in emergencies. Here are a few pictures of a fire steel I just made for a customer. He wanted a piece he could hang grom his kelly kettle and he wanted it to glow in the dark.

OK, this might sound silly to some of you guys, but I carry a firesteel in my pocket at all times for the sake of spontaneous practice. I take walks several times a week and when I'm not foraging for edible plants, looking at birds, scaring lizards, or just plain goofing off, I will often be on the lookout for any random bit of material to test as a potential tinder. It might be any type of grass or fungus or bark or a bit of wood to shave with my pocketknife. After a while of doing this, you get a pretty good idea of what works well and what doesn't, and how to start a fire pretty quick when you need to.

In my opinion the firesteel is a great tool, and a good thing to carry.

Michael

I use hemp twine that's been dipped in beeswax and wrapped around a lighter – the wax assists in a nice and tight wrap and no need for a knot… pretty sure I picked it up from a hippy…

…a hippy knows using a flame from hemp is more appealing than flame from a lighter… much like a cigar aficionado's match…

My variation on that involves jute twine. I unravel it to make a small ball of fluff, then wrap that around a pinch of wax. Then over the outside, I surround that with some cotton fibers to hold it together and to better catch a spark.

–B.G.–