Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Details Of Flint And Steel Fire Starter Kit

By Deborah Collins


People like going hiking, trekking or camping into nature filled areas where they grow wildly with no or minimum human intervention. Places like these may have accommodation structures for those participating but others prefer hills, mountains and forests with no available shelter aside from their tents. You could bring food also and cook them there for your consumption.

Cooking them needs fire which can be started with a lighter or matches but sometimes you could not use them due to the weather conditions. This is where flint and steel fire starter kit is useful as you can make fire without needing lighter or matches. The following are some of the materials included in this kit for the fire to start.

Flints or cherts are family of rocks with different colors that depends on their chemical content and hardness. They could be harvested easily in several unglaciated areas and ideally should have a sharp edge which would bite out steel. Sometimes, they need to be knapped using a hammer or other flint in getting that edge properly.

Common misconception that people have is the particles in it make the spark because they see a little flint inside disposable lighters which wears down unlike the metal wheel that strikes it. This is actually a cerium and iron compound which burns when scratched. Chert does not spark but rather a little curl of steel that was peeled off when a high pressure was exerted on it.

Good kind of steels are those with high carbon and you can give a proper hardness to them by quenching them with oil and will resist pressure more except the small piece for ignition. Properly treating the alloy would provide you with thousands or millions of spark until the effectiveness is lost. Their shapes are usually like the letters U and C depending on your hand size.

Char cloth is linen or cotton which were burned down inside a container so the oxygen will be low like small tins which have a small hole above for the escape of pressure and smoke. This is where you will land the sparks and it will light up then. Make one through placing it inside a tin and cook it in the fireplace or campfire and when the smoke is gone, cool it overnight or if opened, it would kindle.

Lastly, a tinder is needed which is an easily burned material such as dry grass or lint where the spark could land on. You could find these in different places that depends on your terrain but the people usually use oakum as a substitute if needed. This is from jute fibers which were traditionally used for caulking wooden boats.

Prepare your tinder so it would be ready in accepting the char cloth. Then create a nest and place it somewhere you can easily reach it. The fire bed should have a kindling and fuel ready for your burning tinder.

Place a small char cloth above the flint then shave off a little steel strip which will ignite the cloth. Blow gently on the cloth where the spark landed until a glowing crescent is seen. If successful, fold it and blow gently to help the spark spread.




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