Fire without matches

What you need

• A ferro rod and a steel striker or the spine of a knife
• Fine tinder that takes a spark, birch bark scraped to fluff, dry grass, cattail down, char cloth
• A lighter kept on your body as the backup to the backup
• Kindling split fine and stacked ready before you strike

How

1. Build the whole fire first. Tinder nest, thin kindling, thicker sticks, all inside arm reach. You get one good flame out of a spark nest and it will not wait for you.
2. Scrape a small pile of shavings off the rod with the knife spine, then set the rod tip down into the nest.
3. Hold the rod still and pull the striker back along it. Moving the striker instead of the rod keeps the nest where you put it.
4. Drive the sparks into the middle of the nest, not across the top of it.
5. When it catches, lift the nest in cupped hands and breathe into it long and steady until it flames, then set it under the kindling.

Watch for

Notes

Carry three ways to make fire and keep them in three different places, one on your body, one in the pack, one in the boat or on the machine. Cotton balls rubbed with petroleum jelly light off a single spark and burn for two minutes.