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Wilderness Survival - Fire
Two-Rock
Firestarting
by Storm |
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| Well, two-stone firestarting had eluded me no
longer. For some reason, I hadn't thought of trying to strike iron pyrite
with an iron file, which produces dull orange sparks that "float" and wobble
around as they fall to the ground. Everything else that I've hit to generate
sparks produces more-yellowish sparks that just shoot out in an arc as they
fall.
So I tried to use iron pyrite as the base and the striker--and it works!
It's difficult, and thus far I've had to hold the char-cloth differently
than usual. Usually I fold the cloth over the striking edge so that there's
char-cloth above and below to catch sparks. But for some reason that method
hasn't worked with the two pieces of iron pyrite. All the sparks that they
generate when hitting them together fall below the striking surface
(opposite of my usual method). So I can get the two-stone firestarting to
work if I put the char-cloth on the ground (or some surface) and strike the
rocks above the cloth. |
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You can see in the photos that part of
the iron pyrite is fine-grained, while large crystals cover most of
the specimens. The large crystals break off very easily, so in
making fire I strike the fine-grained surfaces together (which still
results in loss of material). |
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