Fire steels: Which do you prefer?

[Younggun]

Kinda heavy though.

 

[Ole Cowboy]

Flick your BIC: War Story

Way back when BIC came out and I had stopped smoking so knew little about them other than they worked on some piezo thingy...I was out on my Sat morning run way out in the country. I look down and there on the road is a BIC. I stop, pick it up and look it over. It would spark but not light, my bet was it was out of butane and as it was disposable someone tossed it out the window and I found it.

I look it over good and am impressed on the piezo deal. Being and old hand at testing 9 volt batteries by touching your tongue to them I decide to see how much juice that tiny little piezo can produce.

A LOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I stick my tongue in it and pull trigger, it knocks me off my feet and punches a hole in my tongue. I pick myself up off the road, toss the BIC and run the next 5 miles in pain...

 

[Mexican_Hippie]

That's hilarious , ha!

 

[jrbfishn]

Why you going to let them get wet?

In a survival situation, things have a bad habit of going wrong. Probably, already have.


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[breakingcontact]

In a survival situation, things have a bad habit of going wrong. Probably, already have.


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Mostly joking. Sure things go wrong. Protect your gear. Bags in bags in bags. Multiple backups of cheap or vital items.

 

[jrbfishn]

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.


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[Ole Cowboy]

In a survival situation, things have a bad habit of going wrong. Probably, already have.


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IF you are in a survival situation the things have already gone FUBAR. When I started camping as a kid back in the early 50's, about the only camping gear was from the Boy Scouts and mostly Army Surplus stores. There was no REI and Wally World, Dicks sporting good etc. There was LLBean, and a few others but they sold to the Safari crowd. So when I went out I had little to carry other than foodstuffs, water we drank from the streams and it was a challenge to start a fire, deal with wet conditions, stay warm etc.

Then stores began carrying stuff, I got a job and had money and bought stuff and often blamed my gear failure on not buying the $$$$ stuff. So more time and more money came my way and I bought the $$$$ stuff, then came the cycle of replacing it with a different brand and or new and improved. My wallet got lighter, the stuff still failed and the fires were hard to start in the pouring rain.

Finally I began to revert back to the lessons learned in Scouts and on my own or from camping buddies. It was then I came to realize that simple and solid is better, the old ways worked for hundreds if not thousands of year before Abercrombie was a outfitter. Keep it simple, keep it as fool proof as possible and BANK on this: Chances are you will lose it before you ever wear it out, in example the magnesium blocks. Bigger back packs only equal ONE thing, can carry your enemy shorter distances and that enemy is WEIGHT! Yea I too fell for the bigger fancy Mt Everest backpack that I could carry a sofa and a kitchen sink in, neither of which I ever needed.

On a regular basis we would be out in the boonies in Vietnam and a chopper would come in and out come FNG. He shucks his ruck, and M 16 and reaches in and gets a duffel bag, then another, couple of cardboard boxes and the crew chief kicks out the rest. We are all sitting there betting what all he has in the bags and boxes. One of us would run out and say let me give you a hand with the gear, grab his ruck, tell him to get his M 16 and get out of the prop wash. Then we watch him go back and get the rest. I have seen them pull out TV's, plug in radios, pillows, sheets, civvy clothes and more. NO ONE says a single word, the Plt Sgt sticks his head in and says we move out at zero dark thirty in the morning. We ruck up and move out, he leaves a trail of tears, often asking if we are coming back later as we all laugh.

ANY object you come to depend upon will sooner or later let you down either by chance (lost it) or by failure...take that to the bank! The smart man will plan for the day he runs out of duck butter saturated cotton balls and everything else her brought...

Bottom line is travel LIGHT. I would say that a 35 lb ruck is good for a year in the bush and a total carry weight of < 50 lbs including the clothes you have on. Learn how to live without the stuff. And you will not learn anything from the BS survival TV shows except from Les Stroud, who IMO is the only guy who has a friggin clue on how to really survive and live and live well.

 

[breakingcontact]

I agree it is better to learn to rough it with less and less gear and simpler gear. That first year of hiking I learned a lot about what I need vs what is a luxury. My nice mess kit and stove was reduced to 1 pot, 1 spoon and an Esbit stove ($10 vs my previous $150 stove). I ate out of the pot, less dishes to do, no liquid fuel to leak.

Nice boots, nice pack...those things do matter and generally cost a fair amount.

This reminds me...for a bug out bag or a get home bag...have an extra pair of boots or shoes that you can walk in. I dont want to walk home in my dress shoes and regarding bug out, you have to protect your feet.

 

[Mexican_Hippie]

I'm in a little different situation.

I'm still introducing a bunch of small kids to camping. I want them to enjoy it. We'll work on more skills and bring less "stuff" as they get older. I know how to go without, but it isn't a good place to start with the real little ones. I used to camp all the time with no tent, etc.

When you start throwing in a bunch of kids this all takes on a different dimension. Those shows, a couple grown men with outdoor skills, whoopdie doo. I sure hope they can make it.

 

[jrbfishn]

Extra socks are a quarter of my ideal BOB.


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[jrbfishn]

Extra socks are a quarter of my ideal BOB.


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Be surprised how much clean dry socks improve everything.

Oops, damn phone
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[Ole Cowboy]

Extra socks are a quarter of my ideal BOB.


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Socks: In Vietnam about 1/2 of those of us on the killing fields wore socks, the other half did not. I had 2 pair, the one I had on, the ones hanging on my ruck to dry and get exposed to UV and sunshine. I changed every day. When the monsoon hit then I would do my best to change as often as I could to dry socks.

 

[Acera]

Gotta remember ounces become pounds and pounds become pain.

That said, my bag is probably too heavy

 

[TheDan]

have an extra pair of boots or shoes that you can walk in. I dont want to walk home in my dress shoes and regarding bug out, you have to protect your feet.

Get some rubber soled cowboy boots. Dressy and functional. Ariat makes great boots for less than some others.

Nothing wrong with having "extra", tho. I keep a pair of old combat boots in my truck for just in case.

 

[Ole Cowboy]

Get some rubber soled cowboy boots. Dressy and functional. Ariat makes great boots for less than some others.

Nothing wrong with having "extra", tho. I keep a pair of old combat boots in my truck for just in case.

FWIW: You should take the most worn boots you have and retire them to your truck or bug out bag. Breaking in a pair of boots on a no notice move out is the last thing you want do do.

Worn in boots + worn in feet = a happy walker, worn in boots is half way there...

 

[mitchell.gary]

bug out bag has lighter. and cotton and Vaseline. Flint and steel would be a backup to a backup to a backup

 

[Andy]

First, know how to make fires properly - the concepts of spark, tinder, fuel, air-flow, etc seem to be foreign to modern youth.

Cotton balls soaked in Neosporin - dual-purpose tinder/medical.

Condom and water - lens.

1.5v battery (eg. AAA or AA) and a metal gum-wrapper (thinned in the middle) - same concept as the 9v/steel wool method.

Dryer lint, magnesium block (I got given mine from the survival pack of a crashed pilot's Mirage) - tie a chunk of hacksaw blade to the block for use as a striker instead of dulling your knife.

Blast Match is good or its smaller cousin, the Sparkie (I keep one in my car console).

 

[Stony]

Magnesium fire starter definitely work, but they don't address that question of fire steels. If you want to learn the fine art of starting fires with flint and steel, you can make your own steel easily. Take any good quality file and you can just break off a section however long you want by cranking it into a vise and hitting it with a hammer. A file is brittle and will break, not bend. Grind off the serrations along the edges of the file and you can gently round off the ends of the piece where you broke it off. You want the edges to be completely smooth. Heat the piece of file red hot and drop it into cool water to make it really hard. The sharp edge of a flint actually cuts off tiny bits of carbon from the file which come off as really hot sparks. It is a little too detailed here to go into, so you might want to google the firestarting process where you make char cloth and stuff like that. It's a fun thing to learn and you can amaze your friends Lots of satisfaction is learning some of the old stuff..

 

[London]

Next time you change a bicycle inner tube, cut it into ranger bands. They hold your shit and take a flame easy if needed. Stink like hell, though.

 

[TheDan]

Next time you change a bicycle inner tube, cut it into ranger bands. They hold your shit and take a flame easy if needed. Stink like hell, though.

+1
I use inner tube pieces as belt loops to hold things.