Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Fire starters

This one will last a lifetime, and be passed down. Koa wood handle. 1/2" magnesium rod, 1/2" ferro rod. Works wet or dry.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/galleries/14070930#Post14070930

I have a FC rod that has Mg embedded in it. Scrape that on a VCB and it will almost light from a mean look. It has a ~2" piece of hacksaw blade tied to it.

We needed an emergency fire one time after yet to g in a little jackpot - long story that's best to.d over a fire and cold beer.

We had matches, strikers, Mg, VCBs, lighters. When it's raining, and has been, and everydamnthing is soaked, finding something the next size up to add is the problem.

We had to break apart branches to get the bits of dry wood inside.
Much better experience in retrospect.

I use a map gas torch and striker to start fires, to hell with matches.

When I was a little kid I saw an uncle almost flambe himself with gas on a fire. Sacred the crap out of him and Grampa who told him not to do it.

How many ways to start a fire do you need to carry? I follow the old Boy Scout ideal that if you can't start a fire with one match you should stay in sight of civilization/

Kerry Carver not only makes great calls, but he also makes amazing fire rods too. I like the magnesium type rods to really get a fire going in a hurry.

https://carverpredatorcalls.com/product-category/firestarters/

I have spent a week in a rain saturated then frozen and snow covered forest a couple of times. With temps low enough to freeze two gallon jugs of water solid overnight, inside a cooler chest. And thirteen inches of snow on the ground.

Available fuel was branches cut from a couple of fallen spruce and white fir trees. Kindling was really tough to come by. If it were not for Bic lighters and Coleman candles, we would have had to saddle up and load the pack horses and come home. Or else someone would have found our frozen corpses as well as the horses the next spring.

One year we came home with a good bull elk. The second year, all we saw was wolf tracks.

Can you make a fuzz stick? If there's spruce around you have it made with dead branches on a live spruce. Deep in near the trunk where they're sheltered from rain.

How many here that use gas, diesel, flares, torches, etc are in tent camps 30 miles from the truck?
LOL.

Me...Always carry flares on snowmobiles and ATV's..Saved my hide more than once...

I had nonmotorized in mind. I seldom take a flare in horse packs.

But, we usually have a Coleman white gas stove. That tank and generator makes a great torch.

A fuzz stick works...until your tail is frozen solid and your fingers and toes are immovable. Then you aren't going to screw with that. You want a fire and you want it NOW. I carry several kinds of tinder and the vasoline soaked cotton balls are the fastest. I also carry a couple commercial starter sticks for the cotton to light.

matches. bic. fire starter rod

Road flares have never let me down. Matches, Bic Lighters, Fire starters all have. Flares will burn long enough to dry out moist wood and get it to burning.There is a larger one in my saddle bags and a smaller one in my day pack.Don't know why anyone would worry about carrying one in a pack.They won't light until you take the cap off and use it as a striker.

Besides, if you have shirker in camp that won't pull his/her weight, carry along an 8" piece of cannon fuse. Stick it in the flare and it looks just like a stick of dynamite. Light it and tell the shirker to get his sh*t together and throw it between his feet or in his bunk if he tends to go to bed too early while others are doing camp chores.Problen solved

I here 'ya,but it is the fire..

There are so many things I want to take, but available room discourages it..There's only so much room in my small to-go pack that goes everywhere with me..I do have a mag striker/flashlight/pauncho tent combo etc etc..

I looked and looked for a good striker firestarter and got a headache, so I just bought a Swiss Safe striker with whistle and compass..Works well enough..Once we got rid of the horses room became more important when using a Tote-Goat...

Around camp..It's oil first with gas over for instant smelly fires.

Here is the how to on flint and steel fire starting.

http://traditionalmuzzleloader.com/index.php/flint-steel-fire-starting

Using the back of a knife blade on those modern strikers might work if your knife is carbon steel. It doesn't work on most cheap stainless steel knives made today. I've found a piece of hack saw blade does fairly well. But I would never rely on those modern type strikers. My modern day fire kit consists of one bic lighter, one Zippo lighter with a tiny tabasco bottle of extra fluid, several storm proof matches and some homemade fire starters consisting of cotton dipped into melted candle wax.

I believe the most reliable primitive method is a bow drill. It doesn't need any charred materials and can be made on the spot with a knife and a good long shoelace. It would take longer to make it from scratch, but it will produce a coal that will ignite any good tender without char cloth.

I, like Sam, carry a piece of a hacksaw blade for the striker. I carry several different fire starters every time I go out. Matches, Bic lighter and a steel striker. When I’m up north I carry fire starters in my backpack AND in my jacket ON MY PERSON. If I fall into cold water I need fire NOW and don’t have the time to dig in my packet as hypothermia sets in and my fine motor movements become impossible. I plan for the worst and hope for the best. Also in my jacket are pieces of sapwood, a medicine bottle packed with lint and sealed with candle wax and a small bottle of hand sanitizer. I have multiple redundancies for fire starters and take wilderness survival seriously. My OCD type planning has never “saved” my life but it has helped others that found themselves “alone in the wilderness”.

I figure that as long as I have planned for every contingency nothing will go wrong but the first time I don’t bring it is when I’ll need it. 😁

Never had to start a fire while out and about. Nevertheless, I carry at least three fire sources while in the woods. Of late, one of those is UCO Stormproof matches. They claim that once lit, they will stay lit even after being plunged into water or snow, relight when pulled out. I tried it and it's true. I also usually carry a couple disposables and a firestick. I like the Blastmatch because you can work it one-handed if you are injured.

I bought one of the plasma lighters a while back and it works well too. The one I bought was pretty big, so I need to pick up a smaller one. Mine claims 1000 lights on a charge.

YouTube has oodles of videos from folks like Survival Lilly on this stuff.

A bow drill can be made nearly anywhere trees grow, but they are very slow, and no where near as easy as most people think. If you intend to go that route, practice a lot at home, until you have them well figured out.
I've built a few, and thought others how. I keep a simple fire kit in my bag with a couple of simple preps, such as magnesium block shavings ground off the block with a belt sander, and stored in a small piece of pipe with one sealed end and one loose cap. Deodorant (old spice) was a great fire starter, but they changed the formula. I have not found a SINGLE deodorant that is still flammable. Cotton dryer lint soaked in wax burns long and well, and I keep emergency candles in each vehicle, and my pack.
A pencil lead, two wires and a 9vt battery will also light a fire, or even the foil wrapper from your gum will work in a pinch. (Or for the more scientific among us, several tubes of superglue poured on cotton balls will produce spontaneous fire. Try it. )

I was a Boy Scout, too. Eagle Scout. This was in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Our scoutmaster was a former paratrooper with the 101 Abn. Div., an had jumped in at Normandy, Marketgarden, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

He would conduct firestarting classes, using matches, flint and steel (real flint, no ferro rods then), magnifying glass, and then he'd pull out his old ZIPPO and say, "Good to know various ways to start a fire, boys, but you'll never catch me without my ZIPPO. Works every time."

I've carried one ever since.

L.W.