Ferro-topia

I've been busy, as you can see in the picture at right. You could say I'm addicted to making the SparxStyx (tm). I need to figure out a way to not end up with epoxy - black on my fingers when I make these things. The problem is that the plastic gloves I have don't allow me enough dexterity to make the handles. I'm also discovering that the 4" x 3/8" rods are actually too big. I prefer the 3" x 1/4" for portability and weight. I've been enjoying experimenting with different handle types, and I have to say I prefer the wood handles. I found an old cedar air freshener that I re-purposed here. The wood is extremely soft and easy to work. It also has a nice feel in the hand. In a pinch, the handle can be shaved and used as tinder too. The suede cord is nice too because it's soft and has a nice grip.

Yet Another Ferro-update

Don't bother spending upwards of $15 on a pre-made firesteel with a handle. Get a 3/8" X 4" ferrosteel blank, wrap about an inch of the blank with paracord (or in my case, an old cotton shoelace) soak it in epoxy (I used white Gorilla Glue - it works divinely), and PRESTO! Instant firesteel. Total cost? About $6. You also get more striking surface this way. (see picture) I prefer to use an old knife or hacksaw blade as a striker.

More on Ferro Rods

Hee hee hee! You said moron . . .

Sorry.

I have had a chance to test a couple of different ferro rods and have actually noticed a difference. The Swedish Firesteel type seems to be harder and sprays relatively short lived sparks. The ferrocerium blanks I've used appear to be softer and create sort of a "dripping molten metal" effect. The dripping molten metal allows you to shoot the sparks farther and light your tinder from further away. I'm still perfecting my technique with these rods and find them more difficult to light tinder close up than the harder, firesteel rod. I find myself shaving off a lot of unlit bits of the softer rods before I get an acceptable spark spray. Maybe it just takes more practice (oh damn). I guess I'll just have to experiment with lighting more fires.

Addendum to addendum

Regarding teeny tiny ferro rods:

Stay away from the small, thin rods unless you are planning on mounting them on something firmer. I have discovered they have a tendency to break easily. If you're looking to conserve weight/space, get a short, thicker rod (3/16" or thicker).
After much experimentation lighting stuff on fire . . . er, I mean testing out tinders, I have reinforced my earlier statement that the tinder you use is as important, if not more important than your method of lighting it. Cotton balls. Keep 'em around. They work beautifully, dry or soaked in your favorite combustible (be careful for god's sake!).

Adddendum to Survival Geek

After experimenting with the cotton soaked in paraffin, I discovered that the densely soaked "nuggets" work very well when you make thin shavings from the nugget with a knife. It takes very little of the volume of the nugget, which makes them last a long time. Several thin shavings made into a pile and ignited with the ferro rod makes a nice flame that can be built into a larger fire. I'd like to say that these soaked nuggets are probably waterproof too, but don't hold me to that. Of course, my experimentation has all been done in my nicely wind free apartment, so the proof is going to be using these in a real firebuilding situation. My guess is that the petroleum jelly soaked balls work much better in windy and/or wet conditions.

Survival Geek

I've always been a big fan of survival science. I'm not obsessed with the end of the world or anything, I just like the idea of being able to handle an emergency if I had to. I'm particularly fascinated with the ability to make fire (go figure) and have been recently toying with firemaking tools and tinders. I have determined that the hands down best firemaking tool to have in your camping / survival / emergency barbeque kit is a "ferro rod" (AKA Firesteel) and some good tinder. I won't go into nauseating detail about what the ferro-rod is (that's what wikipedia is for), but if you ever need to make fire without a lighter or matches, or you just wanna impress the family at the next reunion BBQ, you need one of these. Die hard survivalists might scoff at this, but I am convinced that if I had to make fire with a bow, a piston, a friction plate, or lightning, my rescuers would find my bleached bones with my fingers worn to nubs and a nice clean pile of tinder awaiting the ember that never came.
I purchased the "Swedish Firesteel" from thinkgeek.com about a year ago for about 15 bucks because I thought it was a cool thing. It's a neat, compact package with a comfortable handle and a lanyard with a striker included. When I got it, I played with it and wasn't particularly successful in making fire . . .so I put it away. I have since learned that you can obtain ferro rod blanks (sans handle) much less expensively (about 1/3 of the cost of the "finished" firesteels.) A couple of sites that have great selection and good prices are:

campingsurvival.com

and:

usaknifemaker

Both sites have great instructional videos about how to properly use the ferro rods.

ON TINDER

Recently I've been doing some research about how to properly use my ferro rod and have had an epiphany. . . using the ferro rod is only half the equation. While striking technique is very important, it is crucial that you have tinder that accepts a spark easily and ignites quickly. To this end, I offer two simple words: cotton balls, or cotton wool. There are a number of commercially produced tinders that are waterproof, fast lighting, hot burning, and lightweight. My feeling is that unless you're a navy SEAL and need to tuck your tinder inside a flap on your wetsuit, these tinders are too expensive and over engineered for your average fire maker.
Back to cotton balls. Cotton by itself is a great start, but it burns up pretty quickly. I initially got the idea for using cotton wool from campingsurvival.com (see above) who sells cotton balls soaked in petroleum jelly as a great fire starter (in fact they use one to demonstrate the use of the ferro rods). They are selling a film canister-sized container of the stuff for about 2 bucks. I figured that I could probably make some myself for a whole lot cheaper. I did. They're great tinder, catch quickly, burn nice and hot, and it doesn't take much to get a good fire going. The bad news is that they burn pretty sootily and they're messy.
My next experiment involved drizzling cotton wool with melted paraffin. The result was satisfactory (next time I won't use so much wax), the tinder catches quickly, burns reasonably cleanly, and is much less messy than the jellyballs. The paraffin soaked cotton takes a bit more preparation because you need to shred the cotton to increase the surface area and make a nice flammable surface. If you make it like I did and use too much wax, the cotton becomes pretty difficult to shred. The good news is that once you get some good shredded fibers, it doesn't take much to ignite.
I tried a "wet test" with the paraffin cotton and decided I would just make sure to keep them in a watertight container. They don't burn well when wet. . . I haven't tried the wet test with the jelly cotton, but I would suspect that the results depend on the amount of jelly in the cotton.

05/14/09: since I wrote about the wet test above, I have tried out the jelly balls in the rain and they perform much better. I lit one in the pouring rain and the wetness didn't even seem to faze it.

ON FERRO-ROD TECHNIQUE

When I got my Swedish Firesteel, the instructions told me to scrape off some ferro rod dust onto my prepared tinder and then scrape along the rod with the striker to generate spark and ignite the tinder. I tried this technique and didn't have much success for two reasons. . . my tinder sucked and I wasn't striking the rod correctly. If you are striking the rod correctly, you really don't need to scrape off much because you will be generating flammable ferro-dust with each strike. I found that taking the striker off the lanyard on the firesteel gives me more range of motion and a better strike. I'm not going to go into nauseating detail about the correct way to use the ferro rod (the videos above do a great job of illustrating how to do it) I will say that it takes a bit of practice, but as long as you have good tinder and a correct strike, you should be able to get a nice flame with 2-3 good strikes.
There's a whole lot of really good info on the internet about ferro rod techniques and such - check it out and happy firebuilding!

Back to Blog

Well, temporarily at least. I've been journaling again in various media - mainly Google Notebook, cuz that's the easiest way to make notes from my crackberry. Been feeling like I'm slipping a bit backwards lately . . .been having more dark episodes. I almost wrote black there, but they haven't really been sinking to quite that level. The good news is that I can recognize them for what they really are, and that helps me cope.
I stopped drinking (again) out of frustration in my spending habits (among other things.) It will be 2 weeks on Monday since my last drink. I haven't had much in the way of cravings, really. When I have a particularly bad day at work, I will feel the need to obfuscate my feelings, but then I come to my senses.
Dream Theater has a new album coming out in June. I'm trying to better acquaint myself with Systematic Chaos, since I haven't really listened to it much. Interestingly, I find that often I get loops of DT stuck in my head in the morning if I'm having dark feelings. Ordinarily I don't mind that, but when I'm struggling, the loops disturb me.
The dark feelings seem to be work related. When I'm feeling OK at work, I'm not down as often. Work has been a struggle lately, so there you go. The good news is that some of my feelings, values and philosophies have been validated from outside sources, so that tends to help somewhat.