Today we went cross country skiing, we always ski to a shelter, backpack in lunch. When we get to the shelter we start a fire and cook brats or hotdogs. So instead of using matches I had my oldest boy use the flint and steel with a cotton ball soaked in Vaseline and some pulled apart twine as his tinder, this is old mattress twine wanted to see how it worked. The boy did OK he was able to get it to spark no problem and even got a flame on the cotton ball, but he had his whole set up down low in the ashes and as he tried to move it around to his wood it went out, so I had to start it. Photo here is after the fire was burning and the brats and dogs were cooking. Next char-cloth, I think the boy will have better luck with that and cotton balls/Vaseline, also a good hunting knife will work better for him bit more leverage than the flint and steel alone. The metal striker that comes with it is a bit small for him to use.
I noticed that as well. I wish we would get enough snow to ski/shoeshoe. [] Chared cloth works well for flint and steel, we use to use it all the time when I was young. OGM
There were two on the bench my wife was on the other side same condition. The people we were skiing with are city folk, so he was quite impressed that we got the fire going with just some cotton balls and a flint and steel. Once the boy has that mastered I'm going to have him work on with a bow & drill. He might be a bit to small to keep it up long enough to get a fire going, will see I'll post some photo's of the day on my blog
After my Dad taught us how to start a fire with a flint and steel, he refused to mess with it any more that was our job. But we got good enough to have a fire going in just a few minutes. OGM BTW I look forward to the pics.
funny part was the people were skiing had to stop and watch me and my son start the fire with flint and steel, good thing it only took us a few strikes a couple from my son and a couple from me and we had fire, so besides our friends I'm sure we impressed a few others
I know a lot of folks seem to figure the bow and drill is easier than just the drill but I have tried both and had no joy trying to use the bow but get about 50% of the time if can find a decent stick for just the drill and spinning it between the hands into another stick. I always seem to kick it out of its hole and screw it up if I try to use a bow with it though.
no photo's this time but my buddy just spent the weekend camping. He took the kit that Bear made and got everything together before hand, when he was ready to make fire he said it was only 2 hit with the striker to the flint and the char cloth took the spark, minutes later he had a good size fire going. I qoute "the kit was the bomb"
