Channel your inner caveman. Use small spark, make big fire, ugh. Scrape a knife or the included striker down the length of the FireSteel rod to release a massive a shower of 5400°F sparks. No worries about damp matches or a lighter running out of fluid. If you can’t start a fire with this tool…well, then you probably shouldn’t be playing with fire anyway. Timeless back-to-basics fire starting tool works even when the conditions are wet and cold to ignite a stove, paper, dry grass or any dry tinder. Twenty years from now it will still work perfectly, too. Firesteel is 3.5”x1”x.75”, metal striker is 2.75”x1”. The lanyard measures 7” long for easy carrying or securing to a garment, bag or other gear.

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Cooking with Sticks and Twigs

Cooking with Sticks and Twigs

Nearly everywhere you’ll ever camp you’ll find all kinds of combustible hot-burning biomass. Sticks and twigs the size of your thumb and smaller. This stuff is way faster and easier to light and to cook with that you’d think, burns nearly smokelessly, and will reliably provide more than enough heat for all kinds of trail cookery.

But why go Neanderthal now, with all those ingenious little gas stoves available? Because A) it’s less stuff to carry so you’ll travel lighter, and B) it’s nearly as fast to gather the fuel and then heat a liter of water as it is to do the same job with a hissing stove. And C), it’s a lot cleaner than you’d think. Soot is confined within the ‘chimney’ of samovar-kettles so you never touch it, and flat-folding stoves come with fabric storage sleeves.

What if it’s been raining all day and everything is wet? Uhh…Dead limbs still attached to trees usually remain dry enough to ignite quickly with only a little help from an accelerant like a small piece of dry paper or a few drips of gasoline, or one or two Esbit fuel tabs (#4113). After they are going the heat provided will dry wetter stuff added later. But when it’s really raining super-hard find a motel and eat at a diner -- (even if you are carrying a gas stove).

About the only places you cannot quickly and easily find sticks and twigs are a few high desert locations.

Mr. Subjective

“The sparks from a well-struck flint and steel can be seen for much more than a mile.”

‘The Art of Rough Travel’, 1872, by English explorer Sir Francis Galton, republished edited by Kitty Harmon, 2006

And these luddite fire starting kits are also legal to carry thru TSA checkpoints. It’s no small satisfaction to know that one can always make a big fire in a few moments, regardless of where one is. TSA signage says ‘no matches, no Bic lighters, no ____ of any kind’ with a cute row of about ten ‘prohibited:’ icons. But flint & steel sets aren’t shown. And now you know what’s in my carry-on…

Mr. Subjective (2013)
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