The standard lecture goes like this: If you are going into any kind of wilderness for any reason you need to be able to make fire. To ensure you can make fire, you should bring a fire kit. A fire kit should have a lighter, a Ferro rod, matches, and tinder. This same basic lecture is repeated by all the reputable outdoor skill guys with minor variations. Some people like Dan are satisfied with this basic trio if they are just out and exploring. But Lonnie (who lives in Alaska) adds a road flare to his kit in case he ever needs a fire instantaneously. Josh takes things even further. He seems to strive to have as many possible ways of starting a fire in a small as possible kit. Regardless of how they differ, they all have the lighter, ferro rod, matches, and tinder at the core of their kit.

What I don’t understand at an intuitive level is why the matches? In the theoretical sense, I understand why. More ways of starting a fire are always better. And a good match has fire starting and tinder all bound up in one. But on the logic that more ways of starting a fire are better, I want to have a MAPP torch along with me as well. The reason I don’t carry a MAPP torch is because it weighs too much to be worth what a MAPP torch has to offer.

Now the opportunity cost to carry matches is not anywhere close to being as extreme as that of carrying matches. Nonetheless, in the space that matches takes up, you could have brought something else along. So to my mind, the question is why would I want to bring matches along instead of another lighter or some extra tinder? What does matches have to offer that bringing more of something else can’t compensate for?

Part of the reason I have these questions is that up until this test, I had never started a fire with matches so I had no practical basis of comparison. So for this test, I elected to try to start a fire in as similar conditions as possible between a match and lighter.

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One of the rules I set out for myself when I started these tests was “to try something new either in terms of conditions or in terms of equipment used every week.” For this test, I came pretty close to breaking that rule. It was the coldest I have ever started a fire and the first time I have ever started a natural tinder fire sort of in the dark (I lit the fire in the dark but most of the gathering of materials took place when it was light enough to see). But otherwise there was not a lot to distinguish this week’s fire from last week’s fire.

My original intent was to compare how long it took to start a fire with the Wazoo Ferro rod vs the GobSpark Armageddon. I was also going to allow myself to use a Silky Pocketboy saw and a fixed blade knife to start some “one stick” fires. But due to getting involved in another project, I almost did not have any time to do anything then run a brief comparison between the GobSpark and the Wazoo Ferro Rod with natural tinder. And all this test managed to do was confirm the GobSpark was miles better at starting a fire then the Wazoo Ferro rod.

Given the size and price disparity between the two of them, this is how it should be and it is no knock against the small little Wazoo Ferro rod. But because I had used both of them in different conditions I had managed to get myself confused as to the difference between them. This test at least straitened me out on that front.

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The first ferro rod I ever bought was the GobSpark Armageddon with an attached magnesium rod. At the time I was just starting to think about the need to have something that I could start fires with beyond the lighters I had always used. My goal was to have a fire starting system that could…..

1. Be stored in rough conditions without any care to taken to avoid breaking it or to maintain it.
2. Be used to start fires by even an amateur who had little experience starting fires.
3. Be used to reliably start a fire even in awful conditions.

The fact that it was a Ferro rod with a hard plastic case is what I pinned my hopes of meeting the criteria number #1 on and I can say I have carried it many places without it taking the least damage. So that part worked at least.

But for goals number #2 and #3 I was relying on the attached magnesium rod to magically make everything work. I knew even when I bought this thing (this was before I had ever used a Ferro rod myself) that a Ferro rod can take some skill to use effectively and I knew that they had trouble if you did not have good tinder or were trying to use them in rough conditions. But I also knew that if you made shavings of magnesium and then ignited them, they burned really hot. It was this that I was relying on to make it useable even for those with little skill in bad conditions.

In theory this sounds good. But I never tested it. So for this fire starting test I decided to see how it would work.

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For this test I wanted to revisit the use of duct tape as tinder and try out my FireBox Nano. Both things were done with one fire but the two tests did not work very well together so the test of the Nano was not very fair. As the fire starting was pretty straight forward I am going to keep both things in one narrative.

Conditions: It was 29 Fahrenheit just like last time. This time there was a dusting of snow but had been raining hard earlier in the week so everything was wet just as it has been since I started doing these. And in another shocker, there was also solid cloud cover. The weather has been depressingly consistent this month.

Test: Start a fire with duct tape and lighter in a FireBox Nano.

Equipment Used: Bic lighter, duct tape, FireBox Nano, and a one liter metal water container.

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The goal this time was to test my belt fire kit and to see how long it would take me to get one liter of water to a rolling boil. Both things were tested with the creation of one fire but I am going to split out the discussion of the belt kit into its own section I don’t want the review of the Wazoo gear to get lost in the middle of the discussion of building the fire (which is where the discussion would naturally fall if I was strictly chronological).

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The rules I set for myself for doing a fire every week were that I had to try something new every time. To my rational mind, the concept is similar to how you go up when you are lifting weights. A little bit more every time is how you progress. The problem is that my irrational daydreaming mind thinks it knows more than it does and just doing one new thing seems boring.

As a result, I had planned on doing four new things for this test. I wanted to do a wet lighter drill, I wanted to start a fire at night using only the flashlight I almost always have in my pocket for light, I wanted to use what I call my “backpack” lighter to start a fire by itself, and I wanted to start a fire with no other tools then my “backpack” lighter and flashlight in wet conditions without relying on evergreens to provided my wood. I did not think this would take me much time (I was on a tight timeline for this test) as I figured I could test all four of those things with one fire. But in the end, I only succeeded in successfully accomplishing two of my four goals because I did not know as much as I thought I did.

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Last year Emily Sotelo was going to hike all 48 of New Hamsphire’s peaks before her 20th birthday. She got though 40 of them before dying on a hike. It was unexpectedly bad weather along with some rookie mistakes that killed her. From an article recounting her death…..

According to Kneeland, Sotelo wasn’t carrying any of the essentials that officials recommend for day hikes, even in the summer. No map, compass, or matches. No flashlight or headlamp, though her parents said she used her phone as a light and had a backup battery pack.

“I often refer to them as a glorified sneaker,” Kneeland said. “Low on the ankle, no ankle support. Probably what happened is, when you start post-holing in snow and underbrush, they get pulled off.”

Emily made a lot of mistakes as we all do (especially when we are young). But if she had the equipment and the knowledge of how to make a fire, the same ice covered trees that hindered the search party looking for her could have saved her life even with all the other mistakes she made. At least, that is theory behind why the Park Service in New Hampshire tells you to take matches with you when you go on a hike in the mountains.

Now when I was Emily’s age, I never had any equipment with me to start a fire either. These days when I am out and about I generally have something with me to start the fire. But all my fire starting has been done in good weather. When you actually need to start a fire, the weather is generally pretty bad or you would not need the fire. So how well would I do with what little knowledge I have and equipment I have on hand in less than ideal conditions?

To answers these questions, I intend to do one fire a week from the start of January through the end of March. I am not trying to teach myself anything exotic but rather to see how well what I “know” and what I have carries over to fire starting in winter weather. The goal is to try something new either in terms of conditions or in terms of equipment used every week. I also plan on timing each attempt just to have some kind of basis for comparison (and also because if you ever actually need a fire, you don’t have all day).

So with that preamble out of the way, below is my first fire report for the two fires I made on January 2nd 2023.

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