How To Create Really Big Sparks With A Swedish Firesteel

Description

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In this video I demonstrate how to create really big sparks with a Swedish Firesteel.

Striking the Firesteel with the spine of the knife blade where the bevel comes up to meet the back of the knife, creates large sparks. You can remove a lot of metal from the fireflash this way and therefore create substantial sparks.

Use both thumbs to support your bushcraft knife as you push.

You can also, gently shave off metal from the Firesteel before dropping the spark, to provide extra heat at the point of ignition.

This video forms part of a series of 20 FREE videos I've made to help people with wilderness bushcraft, survival skills and general outdoor life.

To get the other free videos right now, please visit

http://paulkirtley.co.uk/free-tips-and-advice/

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Tags: outdoors,camping,survival,wilderness,bushcraft,Fire Striker,fire,fire lighting,firecraft,Firesteel,Fire Steel,Swedish,Swedish Firesteel,Light My Fire,Paul Kirtley,Frontier Bushcraft,Sweden (Country),Survival Skills (TV Genre),Holiday,Fun,sparks,sparking,birch bark,tinder,kindling

Video Transcription

hi there I'm Paul curtly founder of frontier bushcraft and author of Paul Kirklees blog the leading source of wilderness bushcraft information on the net in this video I'd like to share with you some simple tips and tricks on getting really big sparks from your Swedish firesteel these Swedish fire Steel's sometimes known as a fire flash are excellent fire lighting gadgets there's nothing to go wrong on them there's no moving parts they work when they're wet and they produce many many sparks a box of matches may contain 40 matches and a lighter only has so much lighter fuel in it whereas one of these you can create about 10,000 sparks with one of these so they can last and last and last and last and it's important to know how to use them with the maximum efficiency

so for holding our fire flash it does have this economic thumb depression here which designed for you to put your thumb in here and that that works quite well but this technique I'm going to show you what we're going to do is we're going to push it a little bit further back in a hand and hold the actual shaft the actual rod here and put this handle back in the palm of our hand here and that's for a couple of reasons one is that it gives it a bit more we've got a bit more support and also we can pull that back a little bit versus the thing that we're striking it with we can place our forefinger here to give support so that we can drop a spark directly over what we're trying to light and that minimizes the gap between the end of the fire flush and the the material we're dropping the spark into without actually needing to touch the material and we've also got a bit of space so that we don't crash into the material that were lighting there so that's a way of supporting it really solidly and getting it as close to the material trying to light as possible so that's the first stage the second stage is looking at how we strike it and for this technique we're going to strike it with our knife and the part of the knife you're going to use is where the bevel comes up to the back of the knife here and you're always going to get a good clean edge there right angle and it's going to be sharp and well-defined because you're sharpening the bevel and that will create a good clean edge here and that's going to get plenty of purchase into the fire steel and so we can drop a nice clean spark just where we want it just here for example bring the two together we're going to push with the thumb here but we're also going to support it with the thumb here and slide down in a very controlled fashion

but back of the knife onto the front of the fire steel here i'm pushing off to create a nice big spark like so in a very defined area the useful trick you can use in addition to being able to drop a big spark in one spot is to shave off some material from your fire flash before you drop the spark the way that we do that is exactly the same action as creating a spark but just a little less vigorously a little more slowly and a little more gently so you're not quite doing it fast enough or hard enough to create a spark but you are getting enough purchase to scrape off a nice little pile metal shavings there and we've got a little pile what we then do is drop a spark in the middle of them like so and away they all go that can be really useful in getting enough oomph into your fire lighting particularly in damp or cold conditions or you've got some slightly difficult tinder show you again shaving off some metal right so there's a nice little spark so there you can produce some really nice big sparks using the back of the bevel where the back meets the bevel of your knife pushing down and you might be thinking well Paul uses a knife with a with a large bevel and that area where the back meets the bevel is pretty big so it's easy to push off lots of metal from a fire flash what about using other types of knives and in particular what about using the the type of knife that's become pretty much the de facto standard bushcraft knife the one that many people stick with and certainly the one that many people use as a beginner I certainly started with this type of knife the the Mora now known as the companion knife but also has been known as the clipper and the 840 and this has got a relatively narrow bevel compared to the knife that that I use and also this area here where the bevel meets the back is relatively small can we use that technique with the fire flash in the same way as I use with my pk-1 well the answer is

and let's take a look so bring the two together here take a bit of material off and there we go or just a straight spark get some really good consistent sparks from that being able to drop a really big spark at really close proximity means that we can light whole range of natural materials and a whole range of manmade materials whether we're using our Mora or whether we're using a more custom bushcraft or survival knife for example we could like birch bark or we could light a man-made equivalent so there you have it a really great way of producing big sparks from your Swedish fire steel yeah it takes a little bit of practice but once you've got it you'll always be able to produce really nice big Sparks you can light your fire even in really wet conditions get that concentrated spark just where you need it so I hope that serves you well I hope you find it useful and if you'd like more tips and tricks like this one please go over to my website portfolio UK there you'll find 20 more free videos like this one plus loads of other free information so head on over there now pull curly coat UK and get your 20 free videos thanks for watching this one hope you found it interesting and I'll see you on the next video