Ferro Rods 101 | Hardness Variances

Description

Krik of Black Owl Outdoors gives you the basics about fire steels as well as demonstrates some of variances you may find from brand to brand; namely the hardness of the steel.

Light My Fire Army 2.0 - http://amzn.to/1N4L6ls

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Video Transcription

hey what's up Turtles Creek here with blackout outdoors today's video I wanted to cover fire steels and some of their differences in similarities if you're not familiar with what a fire steel is or Ferro rod more commonly called it's basically an alloy made up of mostly ferrocerium and throws hot sparks to get fires going using all types of material with that being said today I'm going to highlight the differences between a soft and hard fire steel and to do that I'm going to be using three different tinder different tinder options the first one is going to be shredded bark of the tulip tree you use that a lot the second one is going to be really really light small little pile of feathers from a feather stick really delicate delicate tinder and then lastly I have a little piece of fat wood with me I'm just going to get a little pile of fat wood shavings and ignite them using both fire steels so now let's take a look at the specific fire Steel's that are brought with me today here are the two fire Steel's or fair rods gonna be using today well my left this is the hard version with the red handle this is light my fire Swedish fire steel army edition it's thicker than the soft one not really important all that's really going to do is increase longevity of the actual tool not really going to affect technique wise this is the harder version right here red softer version here is from the Pathfinder store much cheaper it is thinner and will be used faster because you're removing a lot more material but black is going to be soft now let's look at sort of the sort of techniques I use I'm going to be using the same striker for both this came with the soft fire steel sharpens edge down here just for I guess keeping as a constant I'm gonna be using the same striker are you I like using strikers can use your knife I don't prefer it I like using a striker basically what you can do to shower sparks is take the whole length of the fire steel and move the striker or knife the whole

of the firesteel - our sparks and the source I'm sorry to showing you this um just this going to show the sparks if you will or how many sparks are coming off so pay attention to that suppose and I get this at the soft one out first technique is just to move the length of the fire steel now what you can do with the harder fire steel to get a more precise sort of an area your sparks are going to be going because it's harder I can basically just get down the end and just push it's basically like I'm just doing a push cut like I'll be using a knife and what this allows me to do is to get right in to my tinder without really messing it up we're potentially compromising it being built here's the soft and basically the difference with the soft is you're gonna be able to actually throw thicker Sparks and this and none of them doing this it's really braced these are just floating I was holding in my hand and they will react different when I actually get the tip brace and you'll see that once I start using the Tinder's but basically I can throw more Sparks using this and it'll wear the rod out much faster okay first technique let's move in so one of the characteristics with this soft fire steel is that you have to use a lot more pressure to get sparks to come off so as you see here doing that same push cut type motion using the same pressure alls it's doing is just basically I'm just removing material not at a fast enough rate to ignite them now that can work in your favor if you just want to shoot you know basically get a little pile of them but as you can see I'm not getting sparks with this motion and it's basically the techniques when were using today and you'll see in the addition I'll have this braced I'll have a brace towards the ground or whatever I'm going to be bracing it on there's going to be techniques I'm going to be using today now let's get some tinder out and lay some things on fire feather SiC first feather stick I made this is just yeah Poplar tulip tree would card firesteel and because this is so delicate these curls are so delicate I really don't want to brace in this and be able to strike down because I could potentially just destroy this so what I want to do practice with this hard fire steel is just try to shower sparks first and see if we can get some of these curls lit just by showering and staying off of the material

not too bad even though this is the hard hard fire steel actually gave me a pretty nice shower not too bad I'm get the other feather stick now and do the same thing with my soft fire steel the reason why I'm showing you showering cuz some people say you really can't get a nice shower there's harder fire steels I think I just proved that wrong or showed you that you actually can so I'm just gonna be the same thing throw sparks at a distance

sort of missing there towards the beginning and you know this isn't really I guess to say the preferred method sort of throwing sparks because you're at the mercy of just basically where the sparks are going to go it's not a real concentrated area for the sparks but I just won the demonstrate that it both can be done at a distance so our next tender option is going to be tulip poplar bark that I found out here today process dried it a little bit and the reason why I'm showing choosing to show this is because you can see how much I'm handling in right I'm not destroying this at all or any of its characteristics by being rough with it as I would with there's feather sticks I just showed

so with this tinder option what I can do is concentrate my sparks in it and be a little bit more rough with it so hard I'm just going to get in it put pressure on this and sort of bring a little bit overall and just push down get some sparks so quick that one up pretty easy right in theory I think when I do this I'm creating friction which creates Heat

and would help drive this out faster you can see as you saw on the first pot I didn't need it but just throwing that tip in there soft same method it on the log pull a little bit of material so over my rod a little bit again pretty easy now basically what this was showing is that yet both these fire steels are these feral rods work but when I have a tender option that I can be a little bit more rough with don't have to be delicate it's not a delicate pile it's not a feather stick basically they're both you know they both work the exact same just as if as effective so as much as this videos about the differences in fire seal it's also a good lesson on different types of tinder and basically the states at which tinder will be processed in the last tinder option we'll be using today it's phat what everyone loves fat wood I didn't collect this out here but I just wanted to give another example of something else basic just being lit on fire using a Ferro rod just gonna create a little pile first and I don't need a big pile this at all and I am gonna give my conclusions at the end of this but a lot of this stuff a lot of the skills the equipment it's very specific to what you like your skillset and where you are in the world the types of material you have available to you I know some people like to hear that when I get questions about what do they thinks the best for them and people ask me what should they buy I can give pointers what a lot of it's really preference in experiencing you're just not going to know until you keep doing it all right that'll be enough for now now this is sort of delicate I can put it here and I run the risk from striking it into here my strike you're potentially hitting it and moving my pile so what I'm going to do is that technique I showed earlier right it's hard I sort of that push cut at the end a real concentrated bit right on the pile pretty easy right really controlled motion not really in jeopardy of knocking all my tinder anywhere well that smells good let's get the saw firesteel or fair ride out and you saw in the beginning of the video really wasn't able to do that sort of pushed cut or push motion with this being sawed off I just can't really generate the friction or speed to get sparks so what I can do is just try to shower or I can start to put it here and then again I run the risk of knocking this pile everywhere if I slip I'm cold and I'm dexterity you know I can knock the pile so I'm just going to shower with this and keep away and stay a safe distance again just as effective and that's all the tinder options I have all the extort experiment I want to do for do for today and I want to give you my final my final impressions and my final thoughts so as you saw me lighting there's tinder different types of tinder on fire

both hard and soft fire Steel's worked I don't believe there's one better than the other they each have their own characteristics and you have to decide what you like better and that's just going to come through time experience and practice when I first started I was using those Swedish the hard fire seals to light my fire and my skills sort of developed with using the hard fire steel I never had a soft one who I could just really shower a lot of sparks so and this isn't the be-all end-all to fire steel videos are still with more knowledge skill you know just there's more I could do so this isn't supposed to cover everything about fire seals I just want to touch on harden salt and a little bit of different techniques so if you have any questions anything you like to add to what I've done you know please leave a comment don't hesitate let me know what you thought let me know if you have any questions I hope the video is helpful hope you enjoyed it like it if you did pop a thumbs up if you liked it this is Crick signing out with blak au outdoors later Turtles