"Mil-Spec" fire steels???

Thomas Linton

Thomas Linton

Joined
Jun 16, 2003
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Anyone have any experience with fire steels (man-made flint/metal match) carrying the "Mil-Spec" brand?
 
I cant see much difference with run of the mill man made stuff. I have a few liying around from different companies and the are the same.
 
I have a couple of the mil-spec brand ferro rods - they seem to work as well as my Swedish firesteel.
 
If you are talking about the thee pack that sportsmans guide is selling .I bought some just to try out and am preaty pleased with them .In fact I have been testing them all day to the dismay of my gf .She swears im going to burn the house down :D.In fact they were good enough that im going to get another set and stash them in different kits.Along with my other fire steels .Hope this helps.
 
I wonder how many different manufacturers of ferrocerium there actually are?!? Like electronic goods, most of the 'innards' are made by 2-3 companies (Matsushita, Sony, and Samsung, together account for an 92% market share,) and simply 'branded' by several hundred others when put into different cases. I have difficulty imagining that there are many makers of ferrocerium, but have seen plenty of the stuff being sold in many different packages with different shaped handles, lanyards, magnesium bars, etc.

I have the Doan's mag bar, Coghlin's mag bar, Swedish Fire Steel, and some no-brand steel that I picked up somewhere. I just tried scraping them all with a piece of hacksaw blade, and strictly anecdotally will say that they all seemed to spark the same! No difference that I can see with the naked eye. Some people have reported that the Coghlin's mag bar separates from the ferro rod if dropped.

Just be sure to put some sort of coating on them after you use them, as they do oxidize and pit up badly if put away for a while. Any oil will do, or clear nail polish, etc.

Stitchawl
 
stitchawl said:
I have the Doan's mag bar, Coghlin's mag bar, Swedish Fire Steel, and some no-brand steel that I picked up somewhere. I just tried scraping them all with a piece of hacksaw blade, and strictly anecdotally will say that they all seemed to spark the same! No difference that I can see with the naked eye. Some people have reported that the Coghlin's mag bar separates from the ferro rod if dropped.
Click to expand...

I believe they are both made by Doan, so they should be the same. The Coghlin's might have some different lettering on it.

For firesteels, there are different compositions, for sure. Some are softer and have longer burning sparks, and some are harder, with more flint-like sparks.
 
stitchawl said:
Some people have reported that the Coghlin's mag bar separates from the ferro rod if dropped.
Click to expand...

I have a Coglahns mag bar where this did happen, but it wasn't because it was dropped. The darn thing just fell off.
 
"Mil Tec" is a company that sells a lot of actual military surplus and "after-market" military gear (clothing, tents, mess kits...) in Europe.

They sell mostly cheap chinese crap at a low price that I'd stay away as often as possible, but they also have a bunch of stuff from reputable companies or some actual issue gear.

http://www.asmc.de/en/Outdoor-Survival/Fire-Starters/Firestarter-Fire-Steel-Mil-Tec-large-p.html

There firesteel looks a lot like a swedish lightmyfire so it is probably one but since I never actually got one from them can't tell for sure.
 
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I have bought blank firesteels from two sources and none of them seem to spark as well as the Swedish firesteels.
 
I have found there are very different firesteels. The greyish style that work okay - and then the blacker harder kind that work much better.

I have no clue who makes what - and they grey kind works fine but the black sends showers of sparks for the same work.

TF
 
I have bought 10 from Ben's Backwoods and they work fine. I don;t know what brand they are or if they're "spec'd", but they're good!
 
I figured I ought to at least do a simple search and see what I could find for ferro rod manufacturers. (I found a whole LOT of wholesalers!)

After 15 minutes I came up with three names, two of them being strictly custom orders, and the third, (that will also do custom orders,) a Chinese company called 'Jiangxi Metals Co., Ltd ' that reports markets as follows; North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, Oceania, Mid East, Eastern Asia, Western Europe
Total Annual Sales Volume: US$5 Million - US$10 Million

That's a hell of a lot of fire steels!! (Actually, survival fire steels seem to be the least of the industry uses.. More goes to the steel industry, cast iron foundries industry, particularly Ductile Iron Foundry. I didn't follow that line to find out what those uses are.) Apparently you can order different grades of ferrocerium and the company will blend to order. This company has the installed capacity of 3, 600 tpy (tons per year... or total photon yield for Trekkies...) of all grades of ferrocerium flints and cerium mischmetal.

I'm just guessing here, but I figure that the difference in sparking would come from different alloy ratios. Must be cheaper to produce if they use less of some rare earths...

Stitchawl
 
For those wondering, the LMF firesteels are different than the Mil-Spec brand. If I recall correctly the Mil-Specs were softer vs. the hard style of LMFs.

I couldn't tell you who makes the Mil-Spec ones though, could be the chinese company stitchawl mentioned. http://www.alibaba.com/member/jxmetals.html is their website on Alibaba - they seem pretty new to the site though, with products only listed for the past 6 months.
 
The ones I got in the 3-pack from Sportsman's Guide were made by Rothco (I'm pretty sure-I am at work and the packages are at home). I have played around with them quite a bit and they are a great deal for the money IMHO. The little striker that comes with them is ok but it is not nearly as good as the strikers that come with the Light My Fire rods (although my favorite striker is the spine of my No. 8 Opinel carbon steel:thumbup:). Also, these rods are just slightly smaller in diameter and length than the LMF Army model...
 
eomeo said:
For those wondering, the LMF firesteels are different than the Mil-Spec brand. If I recall correctly the Mil-Specs were softer vs. the hard style of LMFs.

I couldn't tell you who makes the Mil-Spec ones though, could be the chinese company stitchawl mentioned. http://www.alibaba.com/member/jxmetals.html is their website on Alibaba - they seem pretty new to the site though, with products only listed for the past 6 months.
Click to expand...

Bushman5 posted a link to another part of their website in a new thread, that was very informative about the making of, and other uses of, ferrocerium. I didn't follow up that line of research the other day :eek: when I was looking for manufacturers, but i read it through this time around. Really interesting! :thumbup:

Stitchawl
 
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