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Flint and Steel

Rotte

Rotte

Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
3,214
I am now hooked on flint and steel fire starting. Hooked!

I just got my flint and steel kit from White Hart Forge today. Nice little kit with a cool striker (thanks to KGD, I know to be careful with these now :p.).

624760746_nWmD5-L.jpg


In addition to the striker, it came with a flint, some jute, and some char cloth. The instructions seemed a little backwards to me--but foolin' around for a minute, I started throwing sparks by holding the 'striker' still and hitting hit with the flint. I then used a little piece of char cloth to catch a spark and--voila!--I had an ember and, with a bit of jute, fire!

I figured it would take days of trial and error to get this flint and steel thing going, but in 2-3 minutes I had a fire going (no pics--I didn't have my camera ready because I didn't think it would work :rolleyes:.)

If you haven't tried this yet, I highly encourage you to do so. This was a lot of fun and very satisfying. The White Hart kit is the same as the prize in my Mountain Man contest (dingobubba, yours is on the way!). There are other nice looking kits out there. I may try a few different flints now too--it was just too much fun not to use in the future.
 
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white hart forge is an awesome company. dan is a great guy. i got a huge thor's hammer that i use to start my flint and steel fires from him.
 
They are fun aren't they. Now you go tell Mr. Linton about your backwards way of striking - he'll love you for it :D :D

Seriously, since I got my kit and then Magnussen Strife knife, I haven't started a fire by conventional means yet.


pssst - okay -you are going to light up your stogie -what do you do????? Flint and charcloth - light that stogie off the ember in charcloth. Don't even need the tinder for that one!
 
Now go to the hardware store, usually the garden section, and get a spool of just twine. It will last you a LONG time. Make sure you unravel all of the individual strands to get it down so it is like long dog hair. When it is unraveled down to it's individual fibers like that it will lite up with very minimal effort.

You can also char the twine w/o unraveling it like char cloth and use it the same way.

Jute should look like this when unraveled.
DSC03638-2.jpg


Welcome to the club! It is my FAVORITE way of starting fires.....and my little forge :)
 
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thats great news rotte....i have also recently enjoyed flint and steel style of starting fires!

my knuckles got the cuts to prove it! :)


congrats on the kit!!!
 
Try doing it this way. Place the char cloth on top of the flint. Then use the striker against the flint. Once you catch the spark on the cloth you will be amazed how much time you have to get the char cloth into the bundle. I can get it going first strike most times using this method.

Next try a bow and drill. That is a little more work. :)
 
charadeur said:
Try doing it this way. Place the char cloth on top of the flint. Then use the striker against the flint. Once you catch the spark on the cloth you will be amazed how much time you have to get the char cloth into the bundle. I can get it going first strike most times using this method.
:)
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:thumbup: Yep. Good advise.

DSC03274.jpg
 
Char cloth on top of flint makes total sense. And even a little piece seems to hold an ember for quite a while. How did I live without this before??? :confused:

p.s. I got my Jute stash building already. I've been carrying paraffin impregnated jute with me for a while now--to use with ferro rods--works great. Now to try it with flint and steel!

p.p.s. Anyone have experience starting a fire without char cloth? that seems like a tougher proposition.
 
Rotte said:
Char cloth on top of flint makes total sense. And even a little piece seems to hold an ember for quite a while. How did I live without this before??? :confused:
Click to expand...

Like a light bulb turning on eh? I felt the same way when I figured that one out. I had tried endlessly to get a spark to fall onto a piece of char cloth with very little luck. Then I tried the cloth on the flint and BAM almost never fails. I felt really dumb for doing it the other way lol



Rotte said:

p.p.s. Anyone have experience starting a fire without char cloth? that seems like a tougher proposition.
Click to expand...

Anything fairly thin and charred is going to work well... I have tried all kinds of not charred things...not easy but possible. REALLY dry leaves or REALLY dry moss. It needs to be something that will catch the spark and smolder once it is caught.

I'd be interested to hear what other folks have used in instead of char cloth.
 
Rotte - I have tried punk wood and charcoal from firepits a few times and as of yet no luck. I keep at it. True tinder fungus is supposed to work also, but I don't want to use up my precious small supply on that. The true fungus is also hard to slice very thin, but it is probably worth giving it a shot.

The charcoal pieces should work well in theory and can often be had at old campsites etc. The difficulty I've had is keeping the piece held in place during the strike. It tends to want to crumble on you while striking.

I've also tried PJCB with no luck.
 
I can do it with punk or even scraping from the inside of bark. The problem I always have is finding material that is dry enough. It has to be really bone dry. Often times what I thought feels dry is really holding some moisture.

One trick that works for me is once you find the material grind it up between your palms into as fine a powder as you can muster. You can use your bandanna to catch the powder in. That will go up quicker than char cloth but works very well.
 
Thank you for the good words. Glad to be here in the forum. If you go to my web site at whitehartforge.com we have a video of how to strike "backwards".
Back when I smoked I could win any bar bet by saying, " Bet you I can light my cigarette with the use of matches, lighter or flame of any kind." Used my flint, steel and char cloth. Won a lot of free beers that way.
Cheers,
Dan
 
This looks like fun, but a couple of questions. How long does the flint remain sharp along the edge? Does the flint wear out eventually?
 
The flint stays sharp in my experience due to striking it. I have had to knock it a bit to chip off a sharp edge. It lasts a good while. I have a chunk I found that is about half as big as a bowling ball.
 
IUKE12 said:
This looks like fun, but a couple of questions. How long does the flint remain sharp along the edge? Does the flint wear out eventually?
Click to expand...

Sometimes pieces of flint will chip off but what causes the sparks are molten bits of metal shaved off from the striker. Those small bits of steel spontaneously ignite from contact with oxygen in the air.
 
Thanks guys, Fiddleback, that's a big chunk of flint. You'll be good for a while with that one:cool:
 
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