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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