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Son of Making Fire
- Thread starter stitchawl
- Start date
Reminds me of a line from 'McGiver;' "I always leave the house with an empty backpack to carry the things I find and pick up along the way."
Several people have said this, but I never found anything difficult about it. And it is a LOT of fun!! :thumbup:
I bought my first set-up over the net that came with very clear instructions, and caught a spark in the charcloth on the very first strike. There are a couple of very important points to follow and if you do, you can make fire quickly and easily.
1. The charcloth is VERY important. It must be dry, properly made, and of the right materials. I did a lot of experimenting with different materials on my own and wound up with the same results as best that came in the kit: raw cotton was best, followed by cotton balls, properly cooked. (Cook them outdoors if you have either a wife, husband, or a smoke detector.
)2. The striker must be really hard high carbon steel. You can make your own with a small high quality square rat-tail file heated to bright red in the BBQ, allowed to cool slowly and filed smooth. Reheat to bright red and forge it into the shape you like over a large round stone or a brick, re-heat until a magnet no longer will attract it, then quench in water until cool.) Clean off the firescale and test it for sparking. If it doesn't throw sparks, re-heat a little hotter, quench and try again. A lot of this depends upon the quality of the file used.
3. The technique used requires a full, hard stroke with follow-through, not little choppy hits. Remember, you are actually trying to shave off bits of steel using the sharp edge of the flint. That takes some aggressive attacks of one against the other, with a steep angle between the flint and steel. 20-30 degrees works well, but you need to choose a sharp edge of the flint to dig into the steel. Do be careful and watch out that you don't slash the fingers on the hand holding the striker. Flint IS a cutting stone...
4. It doesn't matter if you strike the flint into the steel or the steel against the flint. What matters is that you hit hard enough and scrap the full length of the striker to make a good shower of sparks. A properly made striker is probably as important as the strike attack itself. I've seen some YouTube videos with people doing it really, really wrong, using strikers that made really wimpy sparks at best, chopping away with short attacks. Some woman must have struck 30-40 times before she got a spark. When everything is working right, you should get a shower of sparks every time, not just a single little spot of light. Almost as much spark as from a small Ferro rod. The larger the strike face of your striker, the more sparks produced. The downside is that a large, wide striker is heavier to carry than a small narrow one.
Hold your charcloth either on top of, or under, the flint while you strike, depending upon what is striking what. See where your sparks are going and hold the char there... In either case the charcloth should be right next to the spark face to catch the maximum number of glowing steel shavings. These are the sparks!
5. Have your tinder bundle prepared before you begin to strike. A nest of unraveled jute works very well, and is convenient to carry while still in cord form . Just put the burning char into the middle of the nest and blow it into flame.
All this is more work than using a ferro rod and PJ cotton balls, but then, that's more work than using a self lighting butane torch. Flint & Steel is for fun. The 'plus' is that it works very well in an emergency too.
Stitchawl
I experimented quite a bit, trying everything from mattress ticking, denim, sweatshirts, T-shirts, cheese cloth, dryer lint, unraveled spools of cotton thread, cotton kite string, cotton balls, cotton batting, and raw cotton. Obviously I did NOT use nylon, rayon, or Polyethalene...
With the sheets of cloth I tried cutting into one inch squares and laying flat in the can, crumpled in the can, large sheets crumpled in the can, cut with regular scissors, pinking shears, and torn. I tried the test items packed tightly and I also tried them very loose inside the can.
All the above were 'cooked' both in the BBQ grill with glowing briquettes piled around the can or sitting on top of the coals, and indoors on a gas stove. (I REALLY do not recommend doing this indoors unless you either have a very powerful vent over your range or are willing to stand there through the entire cooking cycle keeping the escaping gases lit and burining to avoid the smoke.)
The idea behind it all; heat up the cotton material in a relatively oxygen-free environment until all the burnable matter is gone, leaving 'charcoal' cotton. The better sealed your can during the burn, the better the results. Allowing air into the can while burning will result in nothing but ashes inside.
The results; I found cans with very tight lids worked best, but I've seen people suggest using Altoids boxes, and other rather loose fitting top tins. I tried them and they didn't produce as well as the paint-type can lid. My best results came out of a can that originally held paste floor wax. Car wax, shoe polish cans... these would all work fine. The bigger the can, the more char cloth you can make at one time. A can of car wax will give you enough char to last 100-200 fires depending upon how much YOU like to use at one time.
I found that raw cotton produced the best char, with cotton balls and cotton batting coming in a close 2nd. T-shirt, denim, and mattress ticking tied for third.
The proceedure: Use a finishing nail to punch a small hole in the middle of the can lid for smoke and gasses to escape. Fill the can with as much as you'd like, but do NOT pack it down tightly. Half full works as well as full. Put the lid on tightly! Use what ever fire source you'd like but I don't recommend burying the can in the coals. Laying it on top of BBQ briquettes or on the gas burner of the stove is fine, but you will need to turn the can every few minutes so it cooks evenly. High flame on the stove is fine.
After just a couple of minutes you will see smoke coming out of the vent hole. If you are indoors, light this and it will continue to burn, keeping the room smoke-free. You don't need to do this outdoors of if you have a strong vent over the stove. A LOT of smoke will come out, and really shoot out several inches. Keep your eye on this, and as the smoke decreases, turn the can. Keep doing this until there is no more smoke or gas coming out of the can. Check the vent with a lit match to be sure. When there is nothing coming out take the finishing nail and stuff it into the vent hole, sealing it, and take the can off the fire. Let it cool completely. If you open it before it cools the char will turn to ash.
It takes about 15-30 minutes to do this, depending upon the size of your can. Then another 30 minutes to cool down. If done this way you 'should' have a can full of some absolutely perfect char cloth. If you've overcooked it it will be brittle and crumble. If you undercooked it it will be brown instead of black. If it's black and still soft and holding together, you have made good char cloth. :thumbup:
Package it in some air/water proof containers and you are ready to make your flint strikers. Just go and get some old files!
Stitchawl
Missouri is a great supplier of Flint. I had to use a Jackhammer to dig holes for my fence posts because we had so much of the stuff.