How to use a Flint Striker

First off I am going to show you a quick way to make charcloth since that is what we will use as tinder. You could use also fungus, cattail fluff, cedar bark, or a variety of other things. Test what is in your area for a good tinder.

This is a picture of a square tin. The one that I use is about 8" X 4" X 2 " deep. We will put our material inside the tin to make char out of it. Again, a variety of materials can be used including cattail down, lint, and cotton cloth (Old jeans work well)

The above two shots are the piece of denim that we will be charring. I use a piece about 1" X 2" personally, but you can really make the cloth any size you like.

Next the top goes on the can and into the coals of the fire. Usually I do many pieces of charcloth at once, but for this demonstration I only made one. Because of that it only took about 2 mins for the cloth to char. By that time the tin was red hot from the intense coals. Since I shot this series at night for effect, you can see that the fire is very hot. The second picture below I turned off the flash on the camera so you could get a good look at the coals. I love that picture!

Take a good look at the 3rd picture below. One of the things that you need to do with your tin is to put a small hole in one end. This allows the smoke/steam to escape while the cloth is charring. If you don't have this hole in your tin you will most likely have a small explosion. Beware! Put the hole in. If you look closely at the 3rd picture you can actually see the smoke escaping from the hole.

Once the smoke has stopped coming out of the hole I take the tin from the fire and let it cool for a minute or two. After that we can open the lid and the charcloth is finished as you can see below.

Once we have our tinder we can put together our materials to get the fire going. In this instance I am going to use what is locally referred to as "Giant Ragweed". It has many small twigs and makes great kindling to really get a hot fire going. You can see in the top picture the whole plant. In the 2nd picture I have folded it in half to make a pocket to accept the charcloth tinder.

Below are all of the materials laid out for you to see. I have the charcloth, a "metal match", and the Ragweed kindling. I like to keep things organized at this point so I can get the charcloth quickly into the bundle once it is sparked.

The next two pictures are the striking of the "metal match" into the charcloth and the resulting coal. Because it was dark and we tried to get a close up the pictures are a wee bit out of focus, but I think you will get the idea.

Once the charcloth is lit I quickly put it into the pocket in the Ragweed and begin to gently blow...

Below is the desired result... In about 2 breaths the entire thing burst into flames. I would then put this pile into my fire pit and add more kindling until it was really going and then build my fire to the desired size.

While this is certainly not the only way to make a fire with friction it is one of the quickest and easiest, assuming that you have some charcloth with you. Obviously since the char has to be made in fire you would want to make it before you needed it and keep it in a safe place in your Ekit. Go ... Practice... Learn how to make a "Striker"("Metal Match or Flint/Steel) fire. Then you will be more comfortable to leave home without matches or a lighter. Next time we will look at a Fire Bow & Drill, an expedient way to make fire from only materials you find in the bush.