Easy As Pie Instructions For Making Fire With Your Survival Knife
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Written by: RobertPhisher
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Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 |
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You will want to know how to give rise to a fire, even while matches or a lighter are not handy to you. This capability can be a savior, primarily if you find yourself without matches or a lighter in a dire circumstance.
What do you require?
You will need a Survival Knife with a carbon steel blade. This is essential because a survival knife with a stainless steel blade might not set off the spark you're looking for. The flicker comes from little pieces of metal coming off of the striker or Survival Knife in our situation. That's why we use the top of the blade and not the hacking surface. Utilizing the cutting surface will make your blade blunt. That is also why a stainless steel blade may not work. The harder the steel, the tinier and hotter the pieces that detach will be, making it less complicated to burn the tinder and get our flame going.
You will additionally require a strike rod. No, not the style they used to thwack a red-headed stepchild in years past. A strike rod is ordinarily made of magnesium or a combination of steel and magnesium. I suggest you use a twine to fasten it to your survival knife if the handle of your knife has a hole that you can use, or connect it to your survival knife's sheath. At the very least a strike rod ought to be easily available in your survival kit.
You will also need prudently prepared tinder. Use your Survival Knife to strip dry bark off of trees, ideally dead tree limbs. Dried grass or the cotton like material in the back of some tree barks like a cottonwood make premium tinder. Form the tinder in to a bird's nest, this offers the burning cinders some protection from the air. Try to keep the material as loose as feasible. Don't pack it together like a snowball. Loose material has more gaps where oxygen can indulge the flames.
How do you really cook up a fire with your Survival Knife?
Clean the ground of debris where you are going to build the fire. Clean an area more than than you feel you have to. Safety is always necessary. You want to use the fire for warmth and to cook food for survival. You don't want to find out how the U.S. Forest Service trains their firefighters.
Pre Build your mass of kindling, making a tee-pee configuration. Leave yourself a space to place the burning tinder in to the center of the tee-pee structure of kindle wood. Make an attempt to use the defense of your surroundings to anticipate strong winds or rain from directly hitting the location where you plan to create your fire. This will make your job less complicated when circumstances are less than perfect.
Get together your tinder. You want loosely separated, very loose thread-like shavings put together with somewhat thicker shavings. A birds nest composition should work well since it has built-in shelter from the air currents. If you need to, you can splinter thicker bark against a rock to distend the fibers of the wood. You can use your survival knife to make small thin shavings from bark. Some barks like Juniper or Cottonwood are particularly great for tinder but any dry bark should do well. Dried grass can also be used. It isn't a bad idea to amass this type of tinder in a dry Ziploc bag for future use. The tinder will have to be moistureless. While you can possibly get away with wood or even kindling that isn't fully dry, you will be up the creek if your tinder is soaking wet.
Position your tinder near to the site you created. Situate the strike rod kind of above the tinder or lightly touching the tinder and strike the rod with the top of the blade of your survival knife in a downward motion. This will cause the spark to catapult off the blade and on to the tinder. You can also hold the knife unmoving and run the strike rod down the length of the top of the blade of your survival knife if you choose. I like to leave the strike rod unmoving and as close to the tinder as possible, but this is based on preference. The second an actual spark catches on the tinder you will need to administer air to your developing fire by breathing lightly on the glowing tinder. As the red glow grows bigger, apply more air. Keep in mind you aren't the big bad wolf blowing down the three little pig's house.
Once the tinder is hot enough (glowing) or in fact has a flare of some sort, cautiously move it below your pre-built kindling pile. Continue to administer a source of air by blowing directly on to the red hot tinder. Once the tinder is lighted to a flame, you may need to keep on adding tinder to get the flames high enough to burn the kindling. Once the kindling has caught fire you can resume adding kindling to get the fire robust enough to add lesser pieces of wood and bigger ones from there forward.
Keep in mind creating a fire with just a Survival Knife and a strike rod can be tough, even when circumstances are excellent. The most fitting thing you can do, is be ready to go by practicing. Once you have the competence of creating fire with your survival knife down pat, run through it as regularly as possible. You want to have this expertise already learned when you find yourself in a survival situation. That is NOT the time to prepare or practice fire making skills. Practice not only in preferred surroundings but try to practice in very bad surroundings as well. Some brisk or wet condition practice will make you a pro in no time, or just cold, wet and frustrated.
You should know how to get the most from your survival knife. If you feel the need for any new Survival Knives, then you should visit a great site I like when I want a Survival Knife Review before you buy anything.
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