How do you light paper with a fire steel?

D

dd61999

Joined
Sep 12, 2007
Messages
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I was camping last weekend and was trying to start a campfire. I normally have some cotton balls but all I had was newspaper. I thought the fire steel would light it up anyway. But I had no luck. Luckily I had some matches to get it going.

Does anyone one know the trick to getting newspaper to light with a fire steel?
 
tear it up by hand and roll it into a ball between your hand to crush it a little. Worked for me.

Sasha
 
Roll into a tight ball and saw at it with a hacksaw blade striker. The hacksaw blade as a striker fluffs up all sorts of things.
 
In lieu of something jagged, just put your blade perpendicularly on the item to be 'fuzzed', the scrape at it. Works fine for most anything that is capable of taking a spark. I've usually not found paper to be all that easy to burn though, too many chemicals in it for it to do much good I suppose.
 
Sometimes I ignite fire by collecting firesteel powder on crushed paper
by scraping firesteel carefully.
Then let the spark ignite the collected powder and paper.
 
Paper draws moisture like a sponge. Was it damp or humid? It really doesn't take much to render paper less effective to take a spark. Remember split wood burns better than whole wood...newspaper or notebook paper is nothing more than compressed processed wood. Start considering a newspaper as a piece of "whole wood."

If you use sparks as your source of ignition then you'll need to reduce the paper down into smaller pieces exposing more and more of the wood molecules just like we do when we reduce wood down to shavings. It creates more surface area for the spark to heat and eventually ignite. If this paper (or wood) has any moisture content then you'll need to reduce it down even further.

Once you've mastered this important concept then you'll never need cotton balls or even paper again...you can just reduce dry wood (which is found even in a dripping wet rain forest after a 27 day continuous downpour - trust me I live in one and only use materials provided by nature to start my fires) down to fine shavings and start a fire. No offense and don't take this rong, but I've never understood taking man made materials into the wild when God has provided it everywhere. The secret is mastering the principles and skills of how to start fire then one can rely on what is found in nature. So for now, learn how to start a fire with easy to use materials. Build your skills and confidence and then transition to materials found in the wild. You'll really enjoy it!
 
Quirt said:
Once you've mastered this important concept then you'll never need cotton balls or even paper again...you can just reduce dry wood...... down to fine shavings and start a fire. ..........
Click to expand...

Thanks Quirt,

Can you give me an idea how fine the shavings need to be to take a spark
 
I wrap the striker with toilet paper. You have to be ready to drop it in your tinder, it flares so quickly. For newspaper and waxed paper, crinkle it up really good. Let the sparks drop into the folds, it helps.
 
dd61999 said:
Thanks Quirt,

Can you give me an idea how fine the shavings need to be to take a spark
Click to expand...

I've got a video clip of that...

Use the edge or sharply squared spine of a knife to scrape the wood. Hold the blade at about right angles. You'll get very fine scrapings. Note that if you're blade steel is a little soft, or the edge quite thin, this might roll it a little if the wood is hard. The stick I was using was rock hard!

Scraping:

[youtube]67VpryBmTWU[/youtube]

Lighting:

[youtube]aVpjDa1Vzsc[/youtube]

Close-up of the shavings - the fine, papery curls:

fire1.jpg
 
What FoxyRick did in his first video is what we call "producing duff" which is fluffy almost powdery fines from wood. He used a back 'n forth technique...to make it even finer yet...just scrape uphill only in one direction. It lights extremely easy but burns in a flash almost like slow burning gun propellant. If this duff has pitch in it then it will be very dense. Remember fire needs three elements. This dense duff will pack tight thus cutting off one of the elements - air. So move the duff to your burning area and "aerate" it with your fingers to create some air pockets so when the spark touches the duff it has some air to breath.

So make a nest out of fine shavings and then fill the center with duff and shower your duff with sparks...if the duff doesn't take off then the outer edge of the fine shavings often will.

The secret is you can use pitchwood (fatwood) or just any dry wood even in a wet forest will work. I recommend to greenhorns to always carry a piece of pitchwood in their packs until they master this technique with fuel sources they can find in the wood day/night. But at night it is must easier when soaking wet to use the pitchwood from their packs.

Use the newspaper in the same way...the damper the paper is the finer you must reduce it to get it to light. Memorize this "Split wood ALWAYS burns better than whole wood." The more you split (or reduce the wood) the easier it will light (but the tradeoff is the faster it will burn). Take a whole piece of wood and split it once down the middle it will burn easier and faster than the whole piece. Split the two halves once into fourths it will burn even better...split the fourths into eighths and faster yet...make duff like Rick did in his video it will burn like gun propellant with just a spark!!!!
 
Great thread guys. I am lighting fires with ease now with all types of tinder. Thanks again.

Oh, for paper I now shave or tear small strips and put them in a ball and it lights right up with a fire steel.

This should be made a sticky
 
Prior to seeing this thread I had success with common notebook paper.
I crumpled it up, unfolded it and crumpled it again repeatedly. It got soft rumpled and distressed. A little tearing helped too. The little wrinkles and frayed bits caught sparks that just slid off normaly.
 
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