flint and steel

S

ShadowBlade

Joined
Nov 24, 2006
Messages
25
What type of carbon steel works best ( A2, D2, O1, 1095, ect.) with the traditional flint and steel type of fire making, I'm not talking about ferrocerium rods.
 
The basic carbon steels should work best, because they have less materials in them that dont spark well, such as chrome, D2,A2, & some other steels have high chrome content , which is not a good sparker!
 
I just use a bit of an engineers file. A file is easy to break up with a hammer, but be careful of bits of flying metal. I generally grind the teeth off the edges of the file because the edges seem to work best as the striking surface. It doesn't need to be a big file. Old files are often discarded or sold cheap at yard sales etc.
 
coote said:
I just use a bit of an engineers file. A file is easy to break up with a hammer, but be careful of bits of flying metal. I generally grind the teeth off the edges of the file because the edges seem to work best as the striking surface. It doesn't need to be a big file. Old files are often discarded or sold cheap at yard sales etc.
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Same here,I've yet to buy a striker,a good piece of file works quite well.Though I have used the spine of my carbon Moras,works fine as well just a little more dangerous:eek:
 
Do you guys have the files loose in your pack or do you affix a lanyard to it somehow and tie it to you flint?
 
It is not simple to attach a lanyard to a bit of broken file. It is impossible to drill with a normal drill without annealing the file steel, and there is no natural 'waist' to tie a cord around.

Besides grinding off the teeth on the edge of the file, I also round off the corners with the grinder to make the steel less likely to poke holes in my pocket or pack.

I am most likely to carry the striker along with a bit of flint in the screw-top plastic jar that my charcloth tinder is kept in. I guess if I were a purist I'd carry it in a tobacco tin or something a bit more primitive.

If you have a long enough bit of file, you could grind a narrow portion into it for wrapping a lanyard around.

I once ground a small knife from a bit of file....being careful all the time not to overheat it to remove the hardness. The back of the knife was my striker, and the front was the blade. I didn't fit any handle scales.

I find that I can strike decent sparks from quartz as well as flint and chert. I have not yet found a natural tinder that would 'catch' for me using a natural flint. I have only ever had success with charcloth.
 
coote said:
I have not yet found a natural tinder that would 'catch' for me using a natural flint. I have only ever had success with charcloth.
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Bonjour, M. le coote,

Have you experimented with any of the indigenous fungus? Or do you have any? Also, despite what you may have heard, every once in a while you will find a piece of punky wood that will catch a spark, without being treated first. I've had it happen once, but I didn't note what kind of wood it was.

Doc
 
'allo Doc...

Yep, I have experimented with fungus a bit. I think some folks think we do have some good stuff here. An old classic survival book written about New Zealand mentions using a type of bracket fungus as a means of transporting fire. But I never had any real success with the fungus I tried. Mind you, it was quite some time ago when I was playing around with this. I may not have even found the right variety. I should try again.

I concede that it is possible to perhaps catch a spark on punky wood. Some of it seems quite good. It would be wonderful to find something natural that was much better than that though... something you could count on in damp weather.

I think the ancient bow drill is more likely to produce a coal in damp conditions.

I made 17 snare sets for possums today, but we had a short, heavy shower of rain early in the evening dangnabit. I'm hoping that the critters will still be able to smell the lure.

Bon nuit.... Coote.
 
For the past few years I have made and used quite a few different steel strikers. I have all ways used steel from Nicholson, and other quality files as the base. It works well as Coote mentioned if you just break carefully break a chunk off, and smooth the edges. If you do desire to forge one, or start with a piece of annealed file I find that tempering very hard is the way to go. It isn't worth trying with steel that cant be hardened to at least the mid to high 50's on the Rocwell C scale. Joe
 
I forge flint strikers from files (chainsaw files are a favorite) and have also used old garage door springs and old rake teeth.
 
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