Making Fire By Mike.

Mike is one of our group members and one of those chaps who does not give up easily on any project. A while back Mike made a video on making fire with flint and steel, and he had some problems. It is fortunate that Mike is very open about his experimental archaeological efforts, win or lose he still shows his results. This can be a specially frustrating when Mike sees me make fire in a very short time and it looks easy. But I must say here, that it is not always that way.
A while back I was making fire with flint,steel and tinderbox and the grass kindling I was using would NOT take fire. It smoked a lot, but I just could not get flames. I changed the grass, and made fire as usual. Some grasses/kindling are just like that. Probably damp, but not damp enough for me to feel it.
Anyway, you will see in this video that Mike did everything right, and should have made fire easily. But it just did not turn out that way. Thank you Mike for letting me share this video. It shows people that sometimes, through no fault of your own, things just don't always work out the way they should.

Collect dry kindling grass whenever you can and if you have a chance to warm it in front of a fire before putting it in your fire bag then do so. Make sure your charred plant tinder does not attract moisture in a cold tinderbox!!! It might pay you to open the tinderbox up after the tinder is smothered (when making it) and warm it in front of the fife before closing again and putting in your fire bag or pocket. I suspect this too may have happened to Mike, because he was creating good sparks with that steel of his but it still took a while to catch any on the tinder. Anyway, watch this video and learn.
Thanks again Mike, very much appreciated.
Keith.