ironbender;
Good evening to you sir, I hope this finds you and yours well this warm August evening.
One of the interesting things I find about forums like this place is that a few of us have arrived at similar conclusions working at the question independently.
I'm speaking of using a chunk of hacksaw blade for a spark scraper here - I discovered that it will shred chunks of magnesium off the block in fine style about the same time....
When I'm teaching the survival night of our BC Hunter Safety course I'll pull out my day pack and show the class it's contents. When I say that unless I'm struck unconscious or become paralyzed - if I'm ever stuck up on the local mountains they'll spot the fire I've built from any satellite.
In my pants pocket during season I carry a Light My Fire steel, along with 0000 steel wool and cotton balls that are soaked in petroleum jelly.
The pack has a pocket torch, waterproof and windproof matches, regular wooden strike anywhere matches and the above mentioned magnesium block.
As others have noted, the ferro rods indeed work best with some tinder much better than others. I've found that fatwood dust, petroleum jelly soaked cotton balls and
steel wool and dollar store twine chopped fine works well with them.
There are a bunch of youtube videos comparing the different ferrocerium rods - some with different results - so I'm not sure one is better than another really.
I've played with some offshore ones as well as the Light My Fire one I carry and can't see a whole pile of difference.
Lastly I try to start a few fires every year with a ferro rod, even if it's in the wood stove, the prevailing theory being if I really need to use one someday I'd better be able to do it by the numbers so to speak.
Anyway that's all I've learned about fire starting so far sir, but as it's a bit of a hobby with me like as not I'll continue experimenting as long as I'm able.
Hopefully that was useful information to someone out there tonight and all the best to you and your family this fall ironbender.
Dwayne
