I received some flint recently from a friend in Texas and have been using it to make fire using the flint and steel method. I've got a pretty good idea what flint looks like. The inner core of the rock has a dark appearance and the outer layer is lighter in colour.
The rock prior to flaking off a piece.
In our front yard we have a rock garden containing rocks we've brought back from our family vacation trips. One of them was picked up from the Thames riverbed in London England at low tide. I happened to notice that rock the other day and wondered if it could be flint. I decided to flake off a piece and find out if it could produce a spark with my steel.
A piece flaked off.
I flaked a large piece off using one of the other rocks from the garden and then broke it down into a couple of smaller pieces. In the process I noticed blood streaming from my thumb - I had cut it without knowing it. Well these flakes sure are sharp which is a good sign.
Smaller pieces flaked off. Notice the translucent piece on the left.
The moment of truth came as I took one of the smaller pieces and struck it with my steel. Jackpot, it produced a shower of sparks. I will be adding some of these pieces to my kit mainly for sentimental value to remember our vacation but also because they produced a nice sharp edge. The rock seems to have a translucent property making it look like glass.
The rock returned to the garden.
I still have a large piece of rock for the garden safe and sound for when I need another piece of flint.
After watching some YouTube videos of guys lighting fires using the flint and steel method I thought I would try to make my own firestriker (not to be confused with a ferrocerium rod) from some old files I had lying around. The first thing you need to do is to anneal the file to make it soft otherwise it will be too hard to work on. To anneal the file I placed a batch of them in the heat treat oven and turned it on to 850 degrees Celsius. Once they reached that temperature the oven was turned off and allowed to cool slowly in the oven overnight. I then cut a section from the annealed file and ground down the edges before heat treating it to make it hard again. To heat treat it the section of file was placed into the heat treat oven again and taken to 850C. The file section was then tested on a magnet to make sure it was non magnetic. This is a critical step to ensure that the heat treat will work properly. Once that was done it was quenched in water to make it hard. Here is a short video showing the finished product throwing sparks. What is happening is small pieces of the steel are being shaved from the firestriker by the flint and the heat generated from the force of the flint striking the firesteel.
I thought I would give it another go and make a firesteel that could fit in the hand a bit better. I also thought that if you could make the area of the face of the firestriker larger it would be more likely to throw a larger number of sparks. Here is another more detailed video showing some of the process of making the firesteel along with a demonstration at the end.
The tinderbox is basically a steel "Altoids" container that is used to store the firesteel, the flint, the charcloth and some tinder which in this case is some jute or sisal twine. The tinderbox is also used to make the charcloth by placing some cotton cloth within it and placing the box into the coals of a fire. The material will smolder without burning completely since there isn't sufficient oxygen in the box to complete the combustion process. A small hole in the top of the tinderbox allows the gasses to escape. Once the gasses cease to flow from the hole you know it is time to remove the tinderbox from the coals and allow the whole thing to cool before obtaining your charcloth.
In the video the "birdsnest" was made from teasing some sisal rope into it's individual fibres which provides a large surface area for the smoldering charcloth to ignite. In the field you could use dried grasses, dried bark like cedar or whatever dried plant material you can find. I have made several fires using the flint and steel method and have found that it is very important to have all your materials at hand and ready to go so that the fire will not go out before it has a chance to catch and sustain itself.
