Using a Ferrocerium Rod

[Steven J]

I have sent off a number of Ferrocerium rods in the last week and thought that I should put up some tips and instruction on how to use one well.

Step 1 - Getting a spark!
A spark is created by scraping a sharp steel edge down the length of the rod. You can achieve this by moving the sharp edge or by moving the flint. I have found that the most important factors are the hardness and the sharpness of the edge you are using. A sharp 90 degrees like the back of a knife works very well. I keep a small piece of hacksaw blade on the lanyard with mine for everyday carry as I cant get a spark from my SAK - the spine is too rounded. What ever steel you use it must have a sharp edge. In my experience it does not seem to matter whether the steel is plain carbon steel or stainless. I can get good sparks from my daughters craft scissors and the mundal knives in the kitchen knife block - these are both stainless. In a pinch you can use a sharp rock or a piece of glass to strike a spark also.

If you are planning on using the back of your knife, prepare it in advance by filing the spine to a sharp 90 degrees. If you want to prepare a piece of hacksaw blade, remove the paint then square up the back on a sharpeing stone. I have not found any advantages to using the teeth

Getting a strong spark requires a little bit of fiddling until you find your technique. Aiming takes time to develop too. I generally rest the end of the rod in the tinder pile and move the steel down the rod. By locking the rod in position, my sparks are sure to land in the tinder.

Remember that a bit of preparation is necessary. This is not a foolproof method of lighting a fire.

Step 2 - Lighting something!
Like any fire, it is important to use the right tinder. Don't expect the sparks to ingnite a big red gum log, nor sawdust from such a log.

There are plenty of natural tinders that work excellently. Thistle down and Cattail (bull rushes) heads work really well. The cattail will burst forth in fluff if broken and will take the first spark to create a smouldering mass of fluff. Yesterday I was down the creek with my older daugher and son. The little lad was asleep strapped to my front in the baby sling. Even with this physical incumberance, I could get a smouldeing ball of cattail in one strike. We could have had a proper fire in less than two minutes if needed even though it had been drizzling all day.

From this point you can surround the tinder with some fine kindling like timber shavings (POC has a high resin content and will burn agressively) or grass, give a bit of a puff and have a good fist full of fire very quickly.

Cotton balls are a great tinder and when smeared with vaseline burn for a long time and make a reliable firelighter.

If you have stubborn or dampish tinder, you can scrape of some of the ferrocerium into the tinder bundle then ignite with a spark in a similar way that the magnesium blocks work. An intact cattail is always dry enough on the inside when fluffed up.

You can prepare tinder in advance if you wish also. Char cloth is virtually foolproof. I will give details on this later.

The advantage to this method of firelighting over matches is that you can create a smouldering, glowing tinder ball that only grows brighter in the wind. A match on the other hand tends to have blown out before it has served its purpose. In bad weather you reach for match after match after match trying to shield everything from the wind.

The tinders and techniques of firelighting work equally well with matches. Using a flint forces us to slow down and find the right materials. Using a match fools us into thinking that we have mastered the art of fire and can take a short cut as we hold a burning match to a bunch of twigs. We are generally left wondering why we cant light a fire like we used to and either resort to a bit of kerosine or using the box of matches as the tinder we could have found by looking a little closer in our environment. The primary advantage of the flint is not in its agressiveness in burning up anything it looks at, but rather in its resistance to damage by water.

You can't break a flint by wetting it, sitting on it, dropping it or running over it with the car. That is where its advantage lies.

I will take some time over the weekend and collect some photos and produce a better article. In the mean time, square up an edge of steel and practice lighting balls of cotton wool.

Steve

[clinton miller]

i just got some fire steels from survivaltopics.com. they are excellent and are available in lots of different sizes. cheap too.

[clinton miller]

like you said steve they are reliable. i think every backpack should have one.

haven't had a chance to use it properly yet but i did muck around with it a bit. cotton balls that have been fluffed up to be made bigger burst into a fireball with one spark. vaseline cotton balls work better as a fire starter. at a pinch you can get a knife and scape your cotton clothes to get some lint and use that as tinder, (jeans, jackie howe, etc). i managed to get some grass to ignite. i rubbed it between my hands to make it into a finer tinder, (like you do with stringy bark). the trick with tinder is to make it very voluminous. eg- fluffing up a cotton ball four times the size it was makes it ignite easier because there is a greater fuel air mix in a given volume. just the same as atomised diesel out of a spray bottle ignites easier than liquid form.

like steve said you have to have a clean edge on your striker. a slight radius on the back edge of your knife and it won't work. a freshly filed 90 degree edge works good.

[DylanK]

Drier lint is as good as cotton balls and its free! In my experience, i found that good quality stainless steel knives dont throw sparks too well, while carbon steels throw alot more much easily.

[Stickbow Hunter]

Yes, many posts have been deleted as I certainly wasn't impressed with the way this thread went. Such sexual innuendo is not welcome on this site!

These posts would have been gone a lot sooner except I have not been able to keep up to speed with what has been posted of late due to my time being needed eleswhere. Please remember this is a public forum and visited by women and kids.

Jeff

[jape]

Most of whom, on my planet, would laugh and make even worse remarks. This is the 21st Century, and it isn't going to go away just because you are a repressed and old-fashioned wowser!

[clinton miller]

yeah, but an old fashion wowser with manners in public. something lacking in todays society.

anyway back on topic, just cut some loose threads out of my tattered jeans, bunched them up, threw a few sparks on and i had a fire.

[alaninoz]

Yes, women may make worse comments in PRIVATE, but probably not in PUBLIC. There's a difference between the two, and, like Clinton, I wish more people were aware of it.

[jape]

I was rather proud of what my GF told a copper to do with his three inches when he told her she had parked the car just over the line outside the supermarket. And my niece is worse, being of the modern generation, yet they are both middle-class university-educated women of taste and refinement, after all, they love and admire me ! You get more sexual innuendo in a toothpaste, deodorant or underwear ad on the telly than was enjoyed on here.
Sic 'em rex!

[Coach]

You get more sexual innuendo in a toothpaste, deodorant or underwear ad on the telly than was enjoyed on here.

Very true . Maybe a seperate thread should be started for this instead of hijacking Steves
And dont post anymore pics of ya girlfriends tits Jape, although that was allowed

[jape]

Well I think it had almost died naturally anyway until the mods revived it. Wendy can't help having those things Jeff, and the picture was quite demure, far more so than much on prime time TV or sports and dancing programmes. Please do not objectify her just because I wanted to show Jeff Stikbow a check shirt I had found. Unfortunately it was a very hot day so she left a few buttons undone.

[ichiban]

not relevent, rabble rabble rabble

[Nephew]

Hey Steve, thanks for the tutorial, mate.

[ichiban]

yeah good onya mate sorry about the foolishness.

[looseplucker]

Steve

Thanks for the tute - as a matter of record the best source for lint, besides the belly button, is the filter on the clothes drier. My missus saves that for firelighter as a matter of course, but I will have some in the tinder tin.

[Coach]

I found that I had trouble running the hacksaw blade down the rod , so I held the hacksaw blade in the tinder and ripped the Rod back to me . It worked better for me anyway Dogs thought it was fun with sparks flying everywhere