Tips For Using Flint: Survival Hax Fire Starter Review

I went through several different titles for this post and should have had it out a month (or two) ago:

“Light My Fire: Survival Hax Fire Starter Flint”

“How To Make It on Survivor”

“How Not To Burn Your House Down and Win the Darwin Award”

If you have been following me awhile, you know I don’t do a lot of reviews. Food, yes. Gear, not so much. If you remember last year I did a review for Survival Hax and I had some fun making a cat stove. Then my fiancé bought me a Snowpeak Giga Power.

Automatic starter.

It rocks and I’m trying not to think it was a commentary on my mad stove building skills.

This time when they asked if I would review their flint kit, I decided it would be the perfect time to learn how to use flint to start a fire. Wouldn’t that come in handy if I was ever stranded on a desert island? (Coincidentally, for a work teambuilding exercise we played that game where you have to choose three things you would take if stranded on a desert island just a few days after this came in the mail). I was able to show our new executive director what flint was because it was still in my purse. On a side note, she shared her son has hiked the PCT. Cool.

But I digress, back to the flint. The kit comes with a 6″ flint stick, paracord, both a smooth and serrated scraper, a waterproof tinder capsule and a whistle and weighs in at 5.2 oz. Definitely not ultralight but it supposedly will last for 30,000 starts, handy when matches are wet or lighters run out of fuel. I’ll have this baby a long time…

The first thing I did was change up the paracord because I didn’t like how it dangled. I’m sure it is designed that way because so you don’t have to take the striker off to use it but I wanted it more compact and I’m willing to take it off in the event I need it. So, I untied the cord and wove it on the flint stick as a grip. Summer camp weaving skills come in handy…you can see how in this guide, just place the flint stick in the middle once you get it started.

The striker (scraper) even comes with a bottle opener, hex wrench and ruler…

As for why it took so long to get this out, I wanted to film myself using it and the first round brought my friend Jacki (not a hiker) to almost pee her pants laughing after watching it. My second attempt was during a wind storm and it kept blowing the camera over. I would show it anyway for the laughs but I think somewhere around the 5 minute mark of trying to start a fire I made a joke about what a great activity this would be to give a kid and how it would keep them busy for hours. Probably not a good idea because a kid would have figured it out faster than me.

Sooooo, you don’t get to see those videos. But remember, my goal was to learn how to use flint and so where did I go? YouTube, of course. And Survival Lily because that girl ROCKS. If you haven’t checked her out, she has the best tips for wilderness skills. Me, I’m just good at making fun of mine.

Anyway, after learning what I was doing wrong by a skilled woodswoman, I came away with a few valuable tips:

Strike(r) does not mean you actually strike the flint. It is more of a scraping motion.
Harder is not better but quick is queen.
The flint needs to be touching your tinder. Those sparks don’t really like to jump.
Be prepared. Cotton balls are highly combustible, even when you are just a novice. Take fire seriously. And go outside.

So, if you haven’t ever used flint but have watched hours and hours of Survivor, or love Castaway like I do, and want to know how it’s done, check out my video. I used cotton balls I had on hand but the kit does come with some tinder which I decided to save in the event of an emergency.

You, too, could have fun and I won’t tell if you yell out, “Wilson!!!” and do a little dance like I did. No, not captured on video because as soon as he was done helping me, the rain had my son running back inside to his video games….