3V vs fire steel

As long as you have a good 90 degree edge, like a champ. Just tried it with my bark river mini-bushcrafter, got big showers of sparks on two strikes. enough roughening to the corner that I wouldn't want to use the edge, but held up very well compared to some, especially compared to differentially hardened blades, in which that 90 edge can get burnished off quite quickly.
 
my brk kephart 3v works really well. like gadgetgeek said, my 3v is harder than most of my knives (1095 and o1) but that squared spine will get rounded eventually too so most times i use my sak's awl, back of the saw blade or a dedicated striker (almost all my firesteels have one attached by cord).

my dedicated striker is way harder than any knife i've seen since i've used mine for years and the corner is still like new...compare that to a certain 1095 knife i have where i've struck a firesteel maybe 20 times and i can see some rounding of the spine corners already.
 
I tend to carry a dedicated striker, the going-gear ones are really good. But its nice to know what stuff will chuck sparks if needed. And really putting that corner back would be pretty easy in the field with a river stone if it really came to that. I had a laminated mora that could handle about one strike before the edge was pretty gone. very soft spine on those, probably better off using it as a flint striker but never found a stone to try it with.
 
I haven't really used it as such,but a test with

my 3.5 S!K with groove and top quality sparker put out a huge shower of sparks !

Does anyone know what the dedicated strickers are made of ?
 
I've used S30V folder's spine to successfully start a fire with ferro rod. I'd say as long as you have an 'edge' (no chamfer, rounding) most properly hardened steels will give you enough sparks to work with.
 
Pick up a Speedy Sharp. It will do your fero and be an emergency knife sharpener. Leave it on your key chain.
 
More often the things that mess up use of a ferro-rod is the knife being made with a rounded spine, or "broken" corners, blade coatings and differential heat treatments. There are different mixes of ferro-cerium alloy and some are a lot harder than others. The harder ones can give good sparks, but require more pressure. I have only encountered these harder rods from cottage-industry type sellers, the Light My Fire type are soft enough that a Mora will scrape good sparks, although you will need to square up the spine first. There is nothing to say that you can't modify or re-sharpen the spine of a knife if you need it to create sparks.
 
JV3 said:
my dedicated striker is way harder than any knife i've seen since i've used mine for years and the corner is still like new...compare that to a certain 1095 knife i have where i've struck a firesteel maybe 20 times and i can see some rounding of the spine corners already.
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Hear ya, same experience here.
 
Epicurian said:
How well does a fire steel make sparks off a 3V spine?
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Very well, could always use the edge too.

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