Entry level fire striker making(What not to do)

[Robert Egler]

Question: What is the best flint to use? Who would have it?
Thanks for posting pics of you work. :hatsoff:

Any hard rock that's not too brittle will do.

I use either rhyolite (which is commonly called "flint" around here, and was used by local indians to make pretty much any "flint" tools, but which isn't flint, and doesn’t look all that much like it either) or else quartz. Quartz is EVERYWHERE here. I actually find that quartz sparks better than real flint, but needs the edge touched up more often as it breaks fairly easily.

A couple weeks ago out fishing I decided to see how hard it would be to start a fire with nothing but what I could find right where I was. Found some quartz (pretty much by just looking down at my feet) got some dry cedar bark really finely shredded to use in place of char cloth and coarser cedar bark for tinder. Not using char cloth is to me the really hard part, I really have a hard time getting something fine enough to catch a spark. Used the back of my knife as a fire steel. I made the knife and it is really too hard, but it does work as a fire steel (which is how I know it’s too hard. But it does hold an edge, once you finally get a good edge on it). Worked good.

Then I decided that using the knife was cheating, it had to be ONLY things I found where I was. So I used two pieces of quartz. Its hard, but not impossible, to get sparks using just quartz. It was a lot harder this way, no char cloth and no steel, but I did eventually manage to get a fire lit. I’m not saying how long it took, though. :grin:

Never been able to get a spark with obsidian or glass, although I’ve tried. Usually just end up with lots of little pieces of obsidian or glass.

 

[paulvallandigham]

I also found that obsidian and glass are too brittle to cut steel to make sparks. They make Okay arrow points, and spear points, and knives, but not gun flints.