Tinder Pouch: Fire steel, Flint and Tinder

Description of the Product

The tinder pouch (or tinderbox) was such an obvious and common item in the history and development of humankind, that when matches appeared during the 19th century they were thought to be just a passing gimmick or a fad. Striking sparks with flint or other hard stones in order to create fire was an indispensable invention in the evolution of Homo sapiens from earlier hominids. In the paleolithic era flint was struck against ferrous stones to create the necessary spark, but later iron was used to forge a separate tool, the fire steel, to make creating fire easier.

Since flint stone is harder than steel, when these two are struck together, the sharp edge of the flint scrapes off small pieces of steel. The small pieces of steel catch on fire due to the friction of the strike. The spark is then caught onto tinder where it will smoulder. Good tinder materials are for example charcloth (charred cloth), tinder fungus (also called Amadou) or some dry natural materials, like bark or lichen. Once the tinder is smoldering you feed some larger tinder or small kindlings around it and blow gently to spread the spark into a fire.

Flint is not a rock type naturally found in Finland, but it can be found on the shores of old sailing harbours on the west and south coasts. These stones were used as sailing ballast by the merchant ships coming from central Europe. So the flint contained in this set has its own little back story and is already well travelled. The fire steel has been hand forged, and the set also contains a small starting amount of charcloth.

The flint, fire steel and charred cloth comes in a handy suede leather tinder pouch that is easy to carry on your next bushcraft journey or when camping in ye olde way. Complete starter set for starting to learn old bushcraft-skills.

If you have ever wondered how to light fire using flint and firesteel then this video is for you.