As far as I am concerned, having a firestarter in your survival gear is almost as essential as having a knife. Being able to start a fire to cook food, obtain drinkable water, treat yourself or someone else medically, obtain warmth, etc can be essential to a person's survival. In addition, firestarters are light weight, compact, and inexpensive, and there are some excellent firestarters available for you to choose from (e.g., Swedish Firesteel, Gobspark Firesteel, Coleman Magnesium Firestarter, and Genuine Issue Magnesium Firestarter). Once you select and purchase the firestarter you want, here are some tips that you should find helpful when using your firestarter.
1. Before you even pick up your firestarter, you need to collect piles of dry, increasingly larger sized twigs, branches, etc and stack them near where you plan to build your fire. It is better to have too much rather than not enough. (Except for perhaps not being able get a flame in the first place, there is probably nothing as disheartening as running out of small twigs once you have your fire going and then having to hurriedly look for additional twigs only to find when you get back that your fire has gone out in the meantime.)
2. Once you have your piles of fuel collected, you need to spend the time to prepare and accumulate the tinder for your file. Usually this will consist of dry shavings from tree bark or dead tree branches. Try and make the tinder shavings as small as possible and prepare two or three different tinder shaving piles. If you are trying to start your fire from wood that has seen a lot of rain lately and is very wet, use your knife or axe to split the branch and then use your knife to dig out the dry wood from the inside to prepare your shavings. Similarly, once you have your fire going, split your branches and logs in half and lay the dry wood side of the branch or log up against the fire so it can catch fire more easily.
3. Whether you are trying to start your fire with a match or a firestarter, you need to recognize upfront that the wind (air current) is your enemy and plan accordingly. Too strong an air current can prevent a spark from hitting your tinder pile as easily as it can blow out a match. The stronger the wind, the more protection from air currents that you will need to provide to your firestarting site. Use logs, rocks etc to construct a barrier on the windward side of the site. If necessary, you may even have to huddle under a blanket or sleeping bag or perhaps even move to a different location to get your fire started.
4. To make your fire starting a lot easier, here are a couple things you can take with you and use to make your firestarting a whole lot easier. (1) Take a big wad of very fine steel wool with you in your backpack. When you want to start a fire, pull off a wad of the steel wool about the size of a golf ball and form it into a miniature bird nest. Place it on top of a pile of tinder and then compact the tinder and steel wool together but leaving the bird nest hole intact. Place your fire starter down into the bird nest shaped hole and with strong strokes create sparks. The fine steel wool should ignite fairly quickly. Blow gently onto the glowing steel wool and compress the tinder around the steel wool with your hand and the surrounding tinder should catch, start smoking, and create a flame. (2) Put a small jar of petroleum jelly and a bunch of cotton balls in your first aid kit that you carry in your back pack or on your belt. When you want to start your fire, take a cotton ball and stick it in the jar of petroleum jelly and get part of the cotton ball covered with petroleum jelly. Place the petroleum jelly covered cotton ball in the pile of tinder you have collected, and use you firestarter to drive sparks on to the cotton ball. The petroleum jelly should ignite quickly and will burn long enough for you to add twigs and branches to get a nice fire going. (3) Carry a piece of charred 100 percent cotton cloth (referred to as char cloth) in a zip lock bag in your backpack. (You can make your own char cloth from an old cotton t-shirt that you would normally turn into a rag.) When you want to start a fire and have accumulated both your stacks of twigs and branches and also your piles of tinder, take out a piece of the charred cloth and put it in the pile of tinder you want to start. Compress the tinder around the piece of cloth and then using your firestarter, strike sparks onto the charred cloth. The charred cloth will catch and help hold the spark. As with the steel wool, blow gently on the glowing spark on the charred cloth and at the same time compress the tinder around the glowing charred cloth. This will create a better chance for the tinder to catch fire.
5. My final tip is Practice-Practice-Practice. There is a bit of a knack to using a firestarter successfully but it is very easy to pick up the knack with a little practice. And, like learning to ride a bicycle, once you learn the knack, it will stick with you.
