Steel & Rock | Char Cloth Challenge

Description

Krik of Black Owl Outdoors practices creating fire with his new fire steel from Wolfe Customs, a piece of char cloth & a bunch of different rocks. What was originally intended to be a review of the fire steel, turned into a marathon session of Krik attempting fire, first with obsidian, then a handful of other rocks he sourced from next to the stream.

http://WolfeCustoms.com/

While we do read every comment, it is getting increasingly more difficult to respond to as many as we would like. If you really want to contact us, follow the links below.

Connect with us:

website | http://www.BlackOwl.camp

instagram | http://www.Instagram.com/BlackOwlOutdoors

facebook | http://www.Facebook.com/BlackOwlOutdoors

twitter | http://www.Twitter.com/BlkOwlOutdoors

Tags: Black Owl Outdoors,Outdoor Skills,Outdoor Gear,Outdoor Films,Bushcraft,Woodcraft,Wilderness,Sustainable,Self-Sufficient,Nature,Backcountry,Camping,Hiking,Trekking,Self-Reliance,Char Cloth,Fire,Rock,Steel,Flint & Steel

Video Transcription

it was up Turtles creek here with blackout outdoors I want to share with you a recent purchase we have made and that was for steel striker from wolf customs this was our think $23 total was shipping hand forged from justin over wolf customs and i think yeah he does have a video on his youtube channel of him making this or making these one like this and the 4g has at his abode and i believe it so one tool steel like I said hand forged and what this is used for most of you already know so i guess i'll just give a brief explanation for those of you don't know this is used to create sparks as you might be familiar with like a Ferro rod instead of using the ferrocerium rod that's a mix you basically take this steel and you take a hard rock hard lithic that wool it's harder than this and that will create some create sparks and they're not as hot that's what I'm looking for not as hot as sparks from a Ferro rod so you have to be a little bit more aware and your choice of tinder material when you're going to use this sort of method but that all become clear and a little bit more you know in a little bit whenever I actually go through that alright so to start off today what I'm going to use is some char cloth I have a little pill container to some leftovers that I'm going to use char cloth and some people might say this is sort of the easy way to use a tease of steel striker is with a piece of charred material this is a hundred percent cotton chargement too charred material let's think that it's an attender bottle for the time being so I can close this up without it blowing away some people might say it's sort of cheating or easy because you already charred material as opposed to finding a natural material as it's in the forest and using your steel striker to ignite that to get an ember to blow in to blow into flame through a bird's nest or something like that I would maybe say I would agree with that to a degree but the reason why I'm trying to steal striker and why I think it's important skill to have a knowledge because it gives you a more intimate relationship and understanding of the principles of the fire triangle so that's why I sort of want to like to practice this and purchase this one from him is just to get that little bit more intimate knowledge the next piece of the equation to get a fire going with this is you're going to need a hard stone or lithic I have a background in an archaeology so excuse me if I use perms that might not be common but this is a piece of City and I just I just had when I lived in California the stuff is everywhere we're always living but you're going to need a rock that is harder than the steel and some people might say you know obsidian won't work i actually heard people say that I'm part of a few groups on facebook if saying this isn't hard enough because obsidian on the most scale mo HS has a hardness of about five to six depending but there's a really good video of larry roberts just talked about this a week or two ago in his youtube channel and he went out and just did some exploratory testing trying to find hard enough rocks that might not have that conchoidal fracture pattern or the hertzian cone with which really nice with fakes will have if you want to make by phases and tools and such like that but we're going to try to use obsidian today and I have a bird's nest out of frame right now we're probably not going to see it in frame because the sparks are going to be really light and fainting and not on and not bright like you'd expect to see from a ferrocerium rod but we're going to try to do this today I'm trying to use a small piece of of char cloth to make a little bit more challenging and then I have a bird's nest I just want to make sure this is a decent enough state it was pretty dry you see the material flying all over the place through the wind make sure this is well enough and you can use more but I'm trying to keep the material small just to give it a little bit more of a challenge there's a few different ways you can do this you can hold the striker in one hand and sort of come down to rock like this and have your material down below it or you can hold the striker and then have your lithic sort of come this way and hit the lithic but what I'm going to do is I'm going to hold the char cloth and obsidian in this case in my left hand and the striker at my right and this is a challenge some degree because this obsidian like I said it's brittle it's actually you can get the sharpest edge on the planet with asmus obsidian about I think two microns thick the edge thickness you can get this sharper than surgical steel but the downside that's brittle so the brittleness of this is sort of not playing your favor when you're trying to do this but the point is I'm going to take this try to get some light sparks get the Ember on this and i'll show you when the embers on this because you're not going to see it and i'll transfer to the to the tinder bundle my bird's nest and could try to get some flame sure I don't destroy that and just broke brittle I find another spot on the piece of obsidian sharp edge it'll give me some sparks it's just flip it over essentially what i'm doing apparently with this brutal obsidian just pressure flaking or excuse me percussion flaking destroying my char cloth so remember when I said this is going to be a challenging this obsidian well that is true I'm basically knocking this down to almost nothing nearly destroyed the peace of char cloth I was working on because this obsidian so brittle like I said it is causing a problem with getting sparks and I can't really see it's so bright out here sparks i am creating two directed so i'm just going to grab another piece of char cloth and consider this this this test to fail not a test but that piece of charcoal to fail I grab another small piece and I'm no expert guys and gals excuse me I'm no expert I know what I know and I know what I don't know so if I can put some of my failures or experimentation on camera hopefully we can all can learn from it make the world a better place I am going to say this though there's you have access to like chin off shirt or flint something like that and you're willing to trade want to trade me for for some of that let me know leave a comment I'd love to have some of that I have got this to work before with this obsidian like I said it is a challenging you see actually cut myself hitting something of sitting I think assured flew off shard running out of sharp edges all right I'm going to give up on the subsidy in for the time being a therm we're going down to the water it's like sense alright so I was down by the water and broke a rock apart that I thought might have a hard enough and sharp edge and this one seems to be a decent candidate definitely nothing you'd want to nap one but that's not what we're doing today we're trying to create sparks to get some char cloth flip I want to stick with a smaller piece come on pression I'll try to do this holding everything in my hand fold this not try to destroy it it's already half mangled one of those things right doing it on camera always seems like it's a friggin wall to climb looks like I'm running out of sharp edges on this see all the edges are sorta like a Down find another one there's one more spot on here that might work bringing you along for the ride today video is supposed to be about to steal striker and using it but now it's turning into perseverance type video can't see the sparks I'm in the light so I'm gonna try to put in the shade you don't help me direct I am getting some sparks I'm just not it's not going where I want them to have to go into water and crack crack another section off to get to get a sharp edge do a test with this and see if I can I sporks some all right let's go back at some char cloth let's give this another round or sleep without some resistance right it's got some sharp edges wasn't giving great sparks to be expected but let's try to make it work I'm not going to quit today till I get this piece of char cloth lit one camera and then hopefully our bird's nest is well enough ya see it that's not gonna count do everything on camera I think it's so easy filming stuff on camera and happening look good right well that's part of what we set out to do is try to capture everything in detail of what we're trying to do and they're literally three or four seconds I was trying to show the camera that that was on fire was a waste of all that char cloth hand but Tom I got it in there and dropped it and burned myself it was already too late there wasn't enough ember left so let's try it again it's going every way but I want them to kill everyone's got to have one of these videos then you got a few more tries to char cloth going to take bets on this one pretty certain if I had pretty certain if I had the correct stone that be getting much hotter and bigger sparks but I do not so I'm working with my Genuity and lack of preparation I guess all right sorry camera that's it what's off so we're going to continue this this was the piece of rock that I was breaking off the smaller sections got about maybe one more try with the char cloth i have on hand so i did process the bird's nest a little bit more see any sparks now okay finally brigon finally oh my gosh no I learned a lot well this video started out to be just wanted to highlight this and do a quick fire using it the steel striker but it turned into its own Beast so yeah I hope you found the video entertaining if nothing else leave me leave me a thumbs up to let me know your your right a right beside me going through this trial and yeah I have nothing else to say I'm pretty exhausted mentally trying to go through this so this is craig signing out with black out later turtles