Sparks but no Fire?

[EvilGemini]

So I got myself a firesteel and can throw sparks like nobody's business.
I was able to light a vaseline soaked cotton ball on my second strike & a piece of tissue on my third. So I decided I'd step up to "no helpers". I gathered some dry toothpick sized sticks, made some shavings with a larger stick, and tried my luck to know avail. So I decided to scrape some bark from a cedar and had a nice pile, while I got some small smoulders nothing lasted or could be encouraged into flame. The times I did see a small flame was due to a bit of leaf in the tinder & was gone quickly.

Any thoughts?

btw when I touched a match to my tinder pile it went up effortlessly.

-EG

 

[Rat Finkenstein]

maybe you need finer tinder.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

Do a search on char or char cloth, it's pretty standard in most fire kits and works great with flax or sisal fibers.

Try the link it may be helpful, click me

Also look on YouTube for videos they help a lot.

 

[Brian Andrews]

One of the things that help with non-optimal tinder is getting the tinder as close to the spark source as possible. So, instead of holding the flint and steel away from the tinder with enough room that the striker does not hit the tinder, try this: Hold the striker and flint right in the tinder pile, and move the flint backward. Sometimes the higher heat generated by being closer is enough to be the difference between starting and not starting.

Brian