How to make fire using flint?

The group admin pressed me here Russian School of Survival with a gentle voice and a sharp Uzbek knife in his hands, help him make a video about making fire in the good old grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s way, with the help of the same flint, which almost every one of our ancestors had in their minds some 150 years ago. Almost yesterday. The video attached below is just that video. The forest is damp now, chances are with a piece of iron and a flint hurriedly light a fire not too much. If things weren’t so fast, I would have picked “dry” leaves, stripped the bark from “dry” branches, maybe “dry” grass, stuffed it all under my jacket and spent a couple of hours doing housework. For example, collecting brushwood, preparing firewood for the future bonfire. Is this what we gathered for? In a couple of hours, the “dry” preparations for tinder/kindling would definitely have dried out and stirring them “into tow” would have become easier and there would have been more sense from that “tow.” But… But, taking into account the brutal admin arguments, I had to agree and do it the best way: I entrusted one comrade with cutting the bark, whittling a dry branch into “cotton wool” for another, and I myself found the not-so-dry leaves, as it happened. In general, the resulting material was not particularly exciting. I’ve never had anything worse. But the result is on video. And then questions arose: “Why bother with metal, burnt rags, stones, boxes when you can buy cheap Chinese ferrocerium flint “teal” – and order? Well, what the hell?!«. In principle, it is enough for such a person to answer in the same style of a correctional school graduate: “Why the hell with all these hassles with ferrocerium flints, knives and other belongings, when with an ordinary lighter you strike teal – and it’s ready fire? Well, what the hell?!«. And his question is immediately cleared =) My answer is:

Just to have another one fire making skillwhen you don’t have traditional means. And a file, a knife made of high-carbon steel, or any other piece of iron that gives hitting a stone sparks Do you have it or do you know where to find it readily available? And with this knowledge and skill get fire. This set is not needed for anything else. And you don’t even need to carry it with you.

ABOUT! No, I forgot: just for fun =) There are other ways receiving fire without matches, lighters, modern ferrocerium flints. And mastery of each gives you greater confidence in a wide variety of situations. That you will not freeze, prepare your own food, disinfect the water in situations where someone else folds their paws. It doesn’t give anything else. There is no sacred “religious” essence in the possession of ten ways of non-traditional starting a fire No. Those who don’t need it don’t need it.

How to start a fire in a wet forest?

Spring forest. Damp, rather dirty snow, the air is saturated with moisture, icy water dust is falling from the sky. Even the birch bark on the birches seems damp through and through, although this is simply impossible. There is no talk of dry grass, sparse, miraculously surviving on the branches, last year’s leaves drooped, saturated with moisture. You have flint and tinder, but no kindling to create fire from the resulting smoldering coal. Hopelessness. What to do to make a bonfire despite the obvious depressiveness of the situation? First, get good piece of birch bark, sufficient to roll it into a horn or tube with a diameter of ~5 cm or more. Look around. If there are coniferous trees within sight, then you need the lower fragments of branches. A section of 10-15 cm from the trunk is what you need. File, break, chop several of these branches. Sand them down to a translucent amber core. Even if the entire branch is already thoroughly wet (which is highly unlikely), this core will burn beautifully. Water simply will not seep into wood so saturated with resin. This is out of the question. Plane these resinous cores into the finest shavings. A sharp knife rules here. You are not one of those who open cans with a knife or use a blade to scratch flint? No? =) If we don’t have the cores of coniferous knots on hand, then we extract the inner layers of dry deciduous branches and use a knife to scrape out wood fluff from them. Maybe not resinous, but at least dry. We try even more carefully than in the “coniferous” version. As if from this our lives depend. By the way, who knows. :))) The more fluffy, thin shavings you get, the better. In the photo I was frankly playing around. It is necessary to plan even more carefully and subtly. Like fluff. Essentially, we are now making a replacement for dry grass. It is nowhere to be found and is not expected, but we need a similar fibrous, quickly flammable structure. So we make it from wood. We put the resulting rather large piece of wood “fluff” into a birch bark tube and compress it so as to first give it the shape we need. Next, we take out our flint, flint and tinder, and with long-familiar movements we quickly get a smoldering coal. It’s important here that since we still won’t be able to make a 100% replacement of dry grass torn into “cotton wool,” we need to clearly understand that we need a BIG piece tinder, which will swell hotly within 10-20 minutes. Or longer. Because our task now is non-trivial and will require much more and longer heating of the kindling than we are used to. So, smoldering tinder we received it and placed it inside a birch bark tube, burying it in the middle of wood shavings. We twist the pipe and begin to “shamanize”, alternating between blowing through the pipe and waving it with our hand. After 4-5 minutes we clearly feel the warming of the birch bark tube. This means that it is already really hot inside. The trail of smoke remaining in the air as we wave confirms that we are already somewhere at the finish line. We continue to intensively inflate the heat in the tube over the next few minutes. The process is stable, but there is no obvious progress. Doubts creep in: won’t all this gimmick just melt into embers without ever catching fire? It’s going to be quite a bummer. And in the situation survival, it’s also fatal. But at some point, when the hand is still behind the back, a characteristic weak clap is heard, which cannot be confused with anything. And now, before our eyes flame, still timidly grasping the edge of the birch bark tube. Hurray! Happened! Now we add on top the planed cores of branches, chips from logs and everything that seems at least a little dry. If you have a large piece of birch bark, then its hot, “sticky” fire will have time to dry out the added firewood so that it can be used. Well, is the fire ready? And you said that nothing would work out for us! =)

How to make fire if the forest is completely wet?

Storm matches: how they work, how to make them yourself
Making a fire in nature
Fire – so much in one word
How to find flint for making fire in a snowy forest
Making fire with a fresnel lens

When going on a hike, you can often find yourself in a situation where the usual sources of fire – matches and a lighter – have become damp, or are even left at home. We tell you how to quickly and easily light a fire using improvised means.

Friction

This way you can light a fire without matches both in the forest and in the icy desert. It is no coincidence that this particular method of ignition is known in almost every corner of our planet, regardless of climate.