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Flint Strikers
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Flint strikers are often called fire steels. These flint strikers consist of just a single cylinder of man made flint called ferrocerium. Ferrocerium mainly consists of iron, cerium, lanthanum, and small amounts of rare earth metals. Cerium ignites easily at a low temperature which makes making the sparks easy. Lanthanum makes the sparks brighter and iron gives the flint striker it's strength.
When struck with the metal striker, the scrapings ignite reacting with the air generating super hot sparks up to 3000°C. This makes lighting tinder easy. Even in damp conditions, you can start a fire. In many of the Man vs Wild shows, you see Bear Grylls use a flint striker to start his fires.
One popular technique to make starting fires even easier is by using Vaseline soaked cotton balls as tinder. Cotton balls catch sparks very easily. You can just place your flint over the cotton ball and strike it downwards. The shower of sparks should ignite the cotton ball in an instant. When covered in Vaseline, the cotton ball will burn for a long time.
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