Fire School Part 13 Ferro Rod Tips

Description

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

morning folks Dave Canterbury with the Pathfinder school back with another video in our fire school series I thought what we do today is we move a little bit into ferrocerium rods we have started at the beginning basically with friction fire we've moved into Flint steel fires we've talked about how to build proper bird nests copper fire lays processing tender the correct way different forms of tender to include charred material and we spoken about solar embers and reflector type embers where you use the Sun to create an ember or to ignite a charred material or a fungus so what I want to do today is I want to move in our progression into fire cerium rods and the reason I'm doing that is it's a direct descendant basically of the Flint steel the Flint steel as we talked about before works because you're removing iron particles which are pyrophoric which means they combust in microscopic form when you have given them the three legs of fire you are striking against the steel to add friction which adds heat you are removing material from the raw ore from the steel itself which gives you fuel and you add oxygen to that and you get spontaneous combustion percent which gives you an 800 degree spark that lands on your tender charred material with the ferrocerium rod there are multiple metals in the rod not just iron and all these metals are pyrophoric materials some of them burn hotter than others the advantage to the ferrocerium rod besides the fact that it will work even if it's gotten wet you can just wipe it off or whatever it'll work right away is that the sparks are much hotter than from true flint and steel Flint steel sparks about 800 degrees there cerium rod sparks are about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit

so there's a significant difference in what you can ignite and what types of tenders you can use to ignite with the ferrocerium rod compared to the Flint steel what I want to discuss first is ferrocerium rod horse this series is how to properly use a ferrocerium rod how to strike the ferrocerium rod and how to drive that material from the ferrocerium rod to create those sparks and understanding that magnesium while it's a small portion of the makeup of the ferrocerium rod those shavings of magnesium or those shavings of fair cerium that come off of that rod are what really create molten type sparks that burn after the fact and those are what you really want to ignite stubborn type tenders or more coarse tenders so we're going to talk about the proper use of the Ferro rod first stay with me okay so let's first talk about our ferrocerium rod I want this rod to be as long and as big in diameter as I can stand it carry around on me where the biggest one I can find this one is six inches by a half-inch I believe it's the one we saw on our website that's going to give me the maximum amount of surface area it's also going to give me a longer stroke and it's going to last a long time now some of these rods are a little bit different as far as the metal makeup and the hardness of the rod I prefer a softer rod because I want that material that's burning after the fact in my tinder that will ignite stubborn tinder if I have something that only throws sparks because my rods very hard it's going to last longer but it's not going to be as easy to ignite stubborn tinder I don't care if this thing lasts me four years what I care about is it starts a fire when I have to have it to make that happen if this Roz a little softer it's going to work better now striking a fair cerium rod you can use a lot of things to do this with all the handles on these ferrocerium rods that come commercially made come off I haven't seen one yet that didn't come off including the gob spark by fire skills calm I've seen those come off in classes before the best thing that you can do is just wrap duct tape around the handle to give you a place to grip it and you've got something else you can use for fire as well as a coal as a fire extender a flame extender you can also ignite a bird nest or tinder bundle made from this stuff and I've done a video in the past and I may do it again just for this series but the important thing I remember is that you need something to hold on to especially if you've got gloves on so if you put a different handle on this it's not duct tape like this you can use just about anything from antler to wood to bone but you're going to want to pin that handle in there by drilling a hole with a variable-speed drill on a slow pace slow rotation drill it through there put a pin in there and epoxy that pin through there that will keep that rod from ever coming off once you get to that then we need to talk about the strikers and most of these rods will come with a striker some of them are marginal some of them are good but it's another piece of equipment to have to carry something else I have to have attached to the rod something I've got to keep in my pocket there's a lot of things in nature that we'll talk about that you can use for strikers on ferrocerium rods the only thing that really matters is that it is harder than the surface of the rod that's why generally speaking I tell people to make sure that the blade of your knife has a good 90 degree spine on it so that you can use the blade of your knife as a striker and never have to worry about finding something because your knife is always going to be on you and those burning embers that are rolling around here is exactly what I'm looking for those after-the-fact sparklers or what's going to ignite marginal tender so if you've got a knife with a good 90 degree spine on it you should have a striker on you all the time now one of the things that I tell people is don't carry your main ferrocerium rod on your knife sheath and you can see that I would most of the time when I carry my knives there's no Ferro rod attached to that knife and the reason is if I have one attached to my knife sheath it's a backup Ferro rod I always have one in my pocket or in my pack or in my haversack or in my belt pouch usually all of the above and my main one is usually in my belt pouch so that I can use that one and the emergency backup becomes the one that's on my knife sheath this is the one that I use the majority of the time so we talked about the knife being able to drive material off of this to affect cognition one of the best things that you can possibly use in all actuality is glass

the broken piece of glass works fantastic as a striker you can see a very little effort involved in that whatsoever I mean I'm barely even pushing on that it's a lot less effort with this then even with my knife unfortunately the glass is everywhere so if something is very easy to find if you dull the edge you can just get another piece of glass but this is a very good way to make sparks with your rod pulling a rod towards you is the best form that you can use not pushing away now there are times that you may want to hold the rod steady and drive sparks down on the rod depending on the tender source that you're using like this and this is generally the easier way for a child to do it but you really don't want to be doing this because then you're going to knock your tinder bundle around you know get this rod on a solid surface and drive sparks straight down the rod like this starting to dull my glass now a little bit like that or pull the rod towards you like this a piece of Flint from your flint and steel kit or that you find in the ground anything that's harder than a rod is going to work court splint shirt any of that stuff will work you just got to find a good sharp edge and it will work things like this metal striker that we made with this Arrowhead just prototype that I have the edges on this or ninety degrees for a reason they were made 90 degrees to use on a rod so again the proper way to use a Ferro rod is either pull the rod toward you or get the rod on a solid surface this great material off the rod but the things that are burning on their plank here after the fact those are the things that are going to ignite marginal tender for you just a quick demo with the glass for you guys here this is some tulip poplar it was actually laying out here on the ground so it's by no means bone-dry and if I can't expose some fine fibers in here a ferrocerium rod I don't have to be nearest picky with this stuff as I have to if I'm trying to make something I'm going to ignite with an ember from flint and steel or from a bow drill set you can see it's flaming up but it's definitely wet this is definitely a wet bundle of material but you can still get it to work if you properly use your rod the sparking things those are pieces of the material driven off the rod that are laying there just not catching fire when the heats connecting to them okay so real quick let's talk about the fungus real fast here because we've got a chunk of fungus take some of this and just kind of scrape it down with this tool here real quick and I'm just kind of raking the edge of it with the sharp edge of this tool the last one worked the same way I could do the same thing with the last if I had to if I were didn't have my knife if I had my knife I wouldn't be using this glass to strike my Flint with so I can scrape this with the sharp edge of the glass and effect the same thing and get myself a pile here once I've got that pile of material from my fungus find a good sharp edge here on the glass there we go you can see I click that one up that's a nice big burning ember right there it will slowly coagulate into a bigger Ember if I just give a time the Ferro rod is going to light that stuff right up

okay let's talk about fatwood for a minute here we take a piece of that way we can do the same thing with glass as glass becomes our tool much like our knife and we just scrape this down staying on an edge and we rotate that a little bit and that's going to give us a continuous edge to work with and we just keep working that down until we have about a dime-size pile of this fat wood again the great thing about glass is if it gets dull go find another piece of glass it's not that difficult glass is a fantastic tool that unfortunately is very realistic tool to find nowadays in Eastern woodlands with beer bottles and glass soda bottles that are everywhere there we go just a piece of glass in fact wood and a Ferro rod now I keep talking to you guys about the site www.microsoft.com/downloads in Spain and France places like that I think it's going to be a really interesting thing for me to listen to some of my spare time I'm going to travel next week to Missouri to film some stuff for the television show that working on now with hunt channel TV planning on listening to it on my drive to Missouri so I would encourage you to go to audible.com and check them out there's lots and lots 150,000 titles there I believe and I've been finding a lot of good stuff to listen to you know again it's a lot easier sometimes for me to listen to an audible book or an audiobook than it is to sit down and try to read something especially if I'm driving or traveling all right guys well is just a couple quick tips or tricks using your Ferro rod again you don't have to have the striker that comes with that Ferro rod don't necessarily have to have a 90-degree edge on your knife it just makes your knife more multifunctional but there's plenty of things that you can find in nature that will strike sparks or drive material off your ferrocerium rod I'm Dave Canterbury with Pathfinder school I appreciate everything you do for me for my school my friends my sponsors my affiliates my instructors and friends I appreciate everything you do for our business and for school and I'll be back to the other video this is again thanks guys