These are the results from several hours worth of testing emergency fire-starters with a magnesium block on the back.

Note that in this review any time i put words in speech marks - " " i am putting an exact quote from material the manufacterers print online, or on their packaging.

The Products:

Description:

I tested two firestarters with magnesium on the back. The first was made by "Outback Australia" labelled as "Emergency Firestarter". It has a light grey block of metal attached to a black striking rod, and a small chain linking that to (literally) about a quarter of a hacksaw blade. This isnt a picture of the actual product by the same company, but it looked exactly like this, down to having the same colour hacksaw blade and type of chain.

http://tinyurl.com/gcd2o

The second has a dark grey block of metal with the same striking rod, and is stamped "Cochlan's - MADE IN USA." It also came with a small chain exactly the same type as the other brand, but it came with no striker. Dont quote me, but i think it had this packaging (this is from memory, it may be a totally different brand, 99% sure its the same though.) Unfortunately i opened this starter ages ago and threw the packaging away. Only got around to testing it today though.

http://tinyurl.com/jqf7w

Anyway it essentially looked exactly the same as the other one except for the company stamp and it was a darker grey (a coating which was scraped off after the first strike, but we'll get to that later.)

I still have the packaging from the Outback Australia firestarter. It came with these instructions on the back.

quote:1 - Scrape magnesium block to create shavings.

2 - Ignine shavngs using striker strip.

Then underneath these instructions

quote:"Start dozens of fires from this magnesium flame source generating 3000ºC."

I also tested out my magfire flint.

http://tinyurl.com/kl8wz

Its basically a striking rod/flint with a red knob/handle. I untied the cord that came with it and discarded both the cord and the thin striker it came with, preferring to use my knife. The manufacturers boast that it will strike even while wet or while below freezing point, and if you could be bothered chipping the ice of the fucker it would probably work if you had a combination of both scenarios.

The magfire also came with a colour 4-page booklet of how to start a fire with pictures. It also points out things such as..

"The spark shower is very bright and can be seen far away, so you can use it as a signal for help in an emergency."

"A stump might be wet on the surface, but dry inside just like many other materials."

"The sparks are very effective up to 30 centimeters away from the target, so there is no danger of burning your fingers."

"3000 Strikes."

Haha, what a waste of time typing that was, 3 seconds of navigating their site brings up the firemaking page that's printed in their booklet.

http://tinyurl.com/enf5a

It also came with a sheet of what they call tinder. I threw it in the bin, but this is the guff they are pushing, make up your own mind but seems to me its far too fancy to burn.

http://tinyurl.com/e7yhs

Price:

- The Outback Australia Firestarter: $10 AUD (Australian Dollars.)

- Cochlan's Firestarter: $20 AUD (made in USA, maybe its just more expensive because its imported)

- Magfire: $25 AUD for my version. I have seen bigger flints for $40 AUD before. Bigger versions just give more strikes.

Specs

Weight: I have no scales with me, but ill give approximations. The magfire weighed about the same as a normal dining fork (lol, first thing on my desk that i could use as a comparison). Both other models weighed about 3 times that.

Size: All 3 models are about 7cm x 3cm x 1cm. As said earlier bigger models of magfire starters are available but i dont have any stats on those models.

Testing:

Outback Model

- Gathering Shavings.

The first step (according to the uber instructions provided) was to scrape the magnesium block to create shavings. Not wanting to go around cutting blocks of metal with my good knives if it could be avoided, i started with a butterknife. Thus began a session of much swearing and fruitless labour. I eventually gave up the butterknife (threw it into the ground in irritation, though all that scraping/cutting fucked it anyway) and tried with a steak knife. It didn't improve the situation much. In the end i went and bought a new el-cheapo general purpose outdoors knife. What a waste of cash it did fucking nothing, though it was pretty sharp. Not even a round rasp from my toolshed worked any better, infact it was worse because the grooves between the cutting edge of the rasp filled up with magnesium powder, therefore it wasted magnesium and wasted effort.

Half an hour of this and i had a tiny tiny little pile of shavings. I had noticed a few fundamental problems so far:

1 - In all my previous dealings with magnesium it had been a soft metal, probably because ive only ever handles magnesium strips. These magnesium blocks (if thats what they were, im no longer convinced of it) were not soft at all. It took alot of effort to get a shitty amount of shavings. By the end of it i had a massive hand cramp.

2 - 'Fiddly' is the best adjective i can think of to describe the scraping process. I cut myself twice on the left hand (the hand i was using to hold the block, right was doing the scraping) while trying to get shavings. I know that any time you cut yourself you were doing something wrong, but all things considered the product wasn't very well designed from the perspective of the potential user. If i was just out camping and had been drinking, i wouldn't want to have to use a knife to do this, i might very well lose a finger. A more telling point, in a real survival situation lack of sleep and hunger may put you in a similar diminished state, and the problems assosciated.

3 - Getting the shavings to go all in the one spot was a PAIN IN THE ASS! More often than not even when your holding the thing an inch from the ground you just get a huge area with no shavings buildup which is of no use to anyone. I ended up getting a bowl and scraping into that so that i wouldnt lose any, but this isn't very practical in a survival situation. Also dont use glass bowls (or probably any sort of bowl you want to eat from in future), the shavings seem to be embedded in the fucking thing, nobody i showed it to was prepared to eat out of it again. Its going to cost me more in kitchen utensils than fucking products to do a proper test of these things.

4 - Wind, knocking over your equipment or just bad luck could blow away all your shavings leaving you with nothing but bleeding fingers.

All in all, i wouldn't want to have to gather any shavings in a survival situation, or ever again for that matter.

- Now for crunch time: do shavings do anything?

So i traded some blood and sweat for a tiny pile of metal shavings: now what. Well i started out using my knife and the striker assembly attached to the metal block, the striker worked fine but the flash and sizzle i was expecting never arrived. I must have tried 200 strikes and i didnt even get a flicker.

Time to up the ante - i threw some torn up bits of tissue paper into the bowl and tried striking again. After about 50 strikes the tissue paper caught fire, but the metal might aswell have been lead (although lead would have been easier to shave into slithers!)

I thought the glass was too cold and maybe the concave shape of the bowl was preventing oxygen getting to the fire. I took a flat piece of cardboard from a cereal box, cleared my table, and put all the slivers and shit on the piece of cardboard. This was all indoors i should point out. There may be more perfect situations to start a fire, but this is supposed to be an "Emergency Firestarter" and i wasn't going to give it a better chance than this.

More torn tissue paper + shavings + a match, still got NOTHING! I threw 3 lit matches in, and then i lit another match and dragged it all around the tinder. Some little slivers seemed to glow and catch alight, but this was maybe 8-9 slivers of 1000~, plus if i had 4 matches and tissue paper i wouldn't need a fucking emergency firestarter now would i!

Cochlan's Model:

Exactly the same as the outback. Obviously being twice the price paid off. The only difference seemed to be the darker grey colour of the metal, but it must have been a zinc coating or something because after 5-10 scrapes it turned the exact same shiny colour as its cheaper competitor. The coating may be useful in stopping tarnishing/corrison i don't know.

Magfire:

Magfire's come with no magnesium block attached to them. Obviously the "survival experts" who developed magfire put magnesium through much the same tests i did.

Its purely a flint tool, so thats what i tested it as. It worked perfectly. Note that the others all flinted fine aswell, but magfire seemed to work alot better. The only fault i can find isn't one with the product so much, but the "The sparks are very effective up to 30 centimetres away" boast didn't turn out to be true for me.

Magfire also came with a black coating that came off as soon as i scraped it. I think this is to stop tarnishing before people buy it, plus probably for looks a bit aswell. Any chemistry buffs reading this answer me this - would magnesium tarnish the way say silver does? This is supposed to be a compound of several metals though so it may be a moot point. To be on the safe side i wrapped mine in some duct tape. It adds nothing to weight or dimensions, but it will stop corrosion and its probably a good idea anyway - i would hate to be running along and have my backpack catch fire from something rubbing against my flint!

CONCLUSION:

Magnesium blocks are absolutely 100% useless as emergency firestarting tinder. I welcome anyone who can prove me wrong, but as far as i'm concerned i'll never buy them again.

As far as just normal flints go, the cheaper versions worked fine, in my mind not as well as the magfire, but all would serve to start a fire. That said, i would probably go with the magfire. They guarantee it for 3000 strikes AND if it gets wet, although i tested neither personally. All the striking i did today made almost no impact on my magfire but the others have a visible reduction in the size of the striking rod.

If you could somehow bash the striking rod away from the magnesium block you would have a very light, pretty cheap striking tool i suppose, but the magfire is still superior in two ways. 1 - It has a handle, which is definately something to consider seeing as i cut myself twice while shaving magnesium and i had the rest of the block to hold onto then. If you only had a rod you would have to be very careful. And 2 - the magfire handle has a hole in it so you can put it on a necklace or whatever.

After i submit this im going to work on seperating the rod from the bagnesium block on the Cochlan's model so that i can have a very small flint i can put in an emergency survival kit. If nothing else i can still saw off the block leaving only a tiny part of magnesium, which i may have to do since i have a feeling they either used araldite or just welded the fucking thing together. Note that im going to use the Cochlan's block for this not because i think it better in any way, i just used less in my testing, probably because i used the outback model first and after just enough testing to see that there was no real difference in ease of shaving or combustibility of the metal, i stopped.

Next week im going to go buy another magfire so that i can experiment with this one - drill some more holes in the handle to make it lighter and maybe experiment with a way of making it float if you drop it in the drink.

FUEL - METHyLATED SPIRITS:

Im going to take this opportunity to point out some other interesting things i came up with. I use a spirit stove when i go camping ($7 AUD, its just a little can you put metho in and it burns for 15~ mins.) These work fantastic, boil my kettle in 4 minutes, i can do all my cooking on it, they are tiny and weigh fuck all - but ill save them for another review.

http://tinyurl.com/goa4d

Point being: I carry metho for my stove in a small water bottle with a pop-top squirting nozzle (ALERT: Anyone getting ideas for this make sure you adequately label this bottle as metho so that you or some idiot camper doesn't take a big gulp!). Metho is a fabulous emergency firestarting fuel, almost as good as gasoline i think. Today, when it is pretty cold and drizzling rain, i did a test with my magfire where i poured a small amount of metho on my outside table (essentially a puddle 2 inches in diameter.) With one strike from my magfire i had a flame nearly a foot high that burned for nearly a minute. A Tissue with some metho drizzled on it also caught in one strike, whereas it took me a fair while to make a tissue alone catch (like i said, its a cold day and everything is damp from the rain. Lots of water in the air.)

Considering that number 10 on the list of the ten essentials ( http://tinyurl.com/of59e ) i would recommend anyone going into the woods to take some metho in a very secure, watertight container that is VERY CLEARLY marked as flammable and toxic.

I feel that with my combination of chemical fire primer (methylated spirits) and my magfire flint, i could get a fire started in a matter of seconds anywhere in the wilderness, all for a cost of less than $30 AUD.

Final Note: Whenever going into the wild, always carry 2 or more tools for starting fire. I ALWAYS carry at least my zippo, my magfire and some matches in a waterproof container.



[This message has been edited by Garrett (edited 08-13-2006).]

I use the old styles of igniting fires: lighter,friction or the classic smash any two rocks to make a spark

But nice experiment, I must admit.

You're saying that magnesium shavings are 100% useless when starting a fire? They are impractical and unnessecary in most situations and can be quite difficult to use if used improperly. It does take quite a bit of effort to get the shavings off the block and then get them lit, but they can save your ass in the wet situations they are intended for. Sounds to me like you need a better teqnique IMO.

quote:Originally posted by Phaint:

I use the old styles of igniting fires: lighter,friction or the classic smash any two rocks to make a spark

But nice experiment, I must admit.

Are you serious? You've honestly started a fire by hitting rocks together?!?!

magnesium blocks have always worked for me, dunno how you were scraping off the shavings but i can get a sufficent pile in 5 minutes to light a piece of newspaper. I just cant really trust your guide if it took you four matches to light a piece of tissue paper, no offense meant though.

Of course the tissues burnt But 4 lit matches still couldnt get any of the magnesium to burn.

Lighter (http://www.dcsnacks.com/images/large/products/bic-lighter_LRG.jpg)

+

Newspaper (http://www.cbcponline.net/v3/images/Folded%20Newspaper.gif)

=

Fire (http://treeoflifebiblecamp.org/photos/small/campfire.jpg)

that's my moto.

Hands down my favorite way to start a fire is with steel wool and a 9v battery.

That works pretty well too.

I always made it work with the Boy Scouts. It wasn't too difficult.

I've been carrying a Bic since 4th grade. Never leave home without it.

quote:Originally posted by The_Lurker:

Are you serious? You've honestly started a fire by hitting rocks together?!?!

Well, I got sparks from hitting two rocks together and with some tinder underneath it ignited like after 5 hits.

quote:Originally posted by Phaint:

But nice experiment, I must admit.

I know a kid who can start a fire with flint and steel and some scraps of bark. Takes him three strikes and three puffs and you got a fire.

*envy*

Those firestarter things are evil, I can never get them to work. I just use a lighter or I'll just cut off all but a little magnesium and the striker and just use it as a spark machine, thats the best. Though usually I use my stove as a torch and just blast some sticks if I want to start a fire.

quote:Originally posted by Run Screaming:

Originally posted by Phaint:

But nice experiment, I must admit.

I know a kid who can start a fire with flint and steel and some scraps of bark. Takes him three strikes and three puffs and you got a fire.

*envy*

Have you never used flint and steel? Provided your tinder is dry its easier than matches.

magnesium firestarters are the shit. they're easy to use, it takes 5-10 minutes for me to create a pile maybe the size of a small marble. 1-3 strikes of the flint and it's burning with intense heat and light.

good for starting fires.

quote:Originally posted by Phaint:

Well, I got sparks from hitting two rocks together and with some tinder underneath it ignited like after 5 hits.

What rocks are you using? I've never had sparks from hitting rocks together in about 10 years of camping.

using soft rocks no, but using hard rocks im sure sparks could be made by slamming them together

quote:Originally posted by outsmartyouwithignorance:

using soft rocks no, but using hard rocks im sure sparks could be made by slamming them together

Bingo. Alot of hard rocks or minerals cause sparks. Ever see a movie with swordfighting where a sudden hit between swords caused alot of sparks? I think Pirates of The Caribbean 2 had one. Same concept.

quote:Originally posted by outsmartyouwithignorance:

using soft rocks no, but using hard rocks im sure sparks could be made by slamming them together

yes, but it is EXTREMELY difficult to start a fire that way. the embers don't last nearly long enough to start a fire.

A hip flask of Everclear and a Bic lighter will do 1000x better in any survival situation than one of those Mg bricks will. Even in rain, you could get a fire going.

And yes, the tarnished magnesium is MgO, magnesium oxide.

A Bic and some twigs. I always have my knife to make wood shavings to help it light