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The steel must be hardened but softer than the flint-like material striking off the spark. [12] Old files, leaf and coil springs, and rusty gardening tools are often repurposed as strikers. Besides flint, other hard, non-porous rocks that can take a sharp edge can be used, such as chert, quartz, agate, jasper or chalcedony. [2]
The primal mechanochemical project was to make fire by rubbing pieces of wood against each other, creating friction and hence heat, triggering combustion at the elevated temperature. Another method involves the use of flint and steel , during which a spark (a small particle of pyrophoric metal) spontaneously combusts in air, starting fire ...
The steel should be high carbon, non-alloyed, and hardened. Similarly, two pieces of iron pyrite or marcasite when struck together can create sparks. The use of flint in particular became the most common method of producing flames in pre-industrial societies (see also fire striker ).
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, [1] [2] categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start fires. Flint occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks and limestones.
Sheet Iron tinderboxes. English, 18th and early 19th C. Pocket tinderbox with firesteel and flint. This type was used during the Boer War due to a scarcity of matches. A tinderbox, or patch box, is a container made of wood or metal containing flint, firesteel, and tinder (typically charcloth, but possibly a small quantity of dry, finely divided fibrous matter such as hemp), used together to ...
A spinning steel wheel provided a good stream of sparks when it engaged the flint, and a tinderbox designed to do this was known as a mill. [10] In a modern lighter or firesteel, iron is mixed with cerium and other rare earths to form the alloy ferrocerium. This readily produces sparks when scraped and burns hotter than steel would.
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Feather sticks can be used with char cloth, where a small piece of the cloth is wound around the curls and a spark is struck on to it, using either the traditional flint and steel or a modern ferrocerium striker. [1]