Ultimate Survival Technologies Sparkie (Part 2)

I know there's been an awful lot of talk about firestarting and firesteels here of late but it just happens to be the subject on my mind at the moment. Here's a video I shot on how I use WetFire Tinder and the new Sparkie from Ultimate Survival Technologies (UST.)



In a nutshell, I crush the cube of WetFire with my thumb before opening the wrapper. This gives me much greater surface area and the smaller bits easily ignite with a spark from the firesteel. Sparkie can be used one handed while pushing down toward the tinder or you can hold it above your tinder and drive the firesteel rod past the striker using your thumb or index finger.

After a couple of strikes I found Sparkie got a little gummed up but a quick rinse and shake dry fixed that problem and now it's working as good as new and maybe even better because I've removed the protective coating on the firesteel.

I also found out what it takes to make WetFire stop working before it's all used up. After the video was shot I put out the tinder cube and scraped the remaining tinder into a pile. Then I left it. It rained non-stop all weekend and that tinder was soaking wet by the time I came out late on Sunday morning. High winds had also blown a good bit of it away to points beyond. Three days of rain on partially-burned WetFire will keep it from igniting. If you use a partial cube to get your fire started though you can wrap up the remainder in the mylar wrapper and keep it for weeks (if not months) and it'll still light as easily as it did the first time out.

Today I'm working on yet another fire-related project. I'll have more to share tomorrow...

Thanks for reading,


B