4 Tips For the Successful use of a Ferro Rod

I love spark rods. These durable, yet affordable spark throwers will work in any temperature extreme and even work after being wet. And while a butane lighter may work best in most situations (since an open flame ignites a wider range of tinder than sparks alone), a “Ferro rod” makes a great piece of backup gear. They’ve also been around for over a century. Ferrocerium was invented in 1903 by the chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach in Austria. This alloy produces hot sparks in excess of 3,000F when it’s scraped against a rough surface or sharp edge. The recipe for this alloy varies, but it’s generally 50 percent cerium, 25 percent lanthanum, 19 percent iron, with small amounts of praseodymium, neodymium, and magnesium.

Carl Auer von Welsbach 

Ferrocerium rods are a popular fire starter among survival enthusiasts, though quite often, they are sold in packaging that is devoid of detailed instruction. This knowledge gap leads to frustrated newbies and mistaken claims that the products don’t work. Over the years, I’ve watched fledgeling survivalists stumble over the same problems—which are easily solved with a little understanding.

1. Scrape Off The Paint

Many spark rods are coated with a slick black paint to prevent corrosion and to keep them from scraping against each other during manufacture and transport to the marketplace. This paint will need to be scraped off before the sparks start to fly. Most often, the pressure you’d apply to scrape off sparks will also scrape off the paint and expose the ferrocerium.

2. Scrape Hard

I often advise my students to scrape the rod “like you’re trying to break it!” Dainty scraping won’t remove enough material from the rod or provide enough friction to ignite the scrapings. Scrape it like you mean it!

3. Pick The Right Fuel

Spark rods don’t light everything on fire. You’ll need natural plant-based fuzz for the tinder on this ignition method. Cotton balls and dryer lint are great choices in the backyard, while cattail seed down, goldenrod fluff, and milkweed down are great materials to source in the wild. Dry, dead leaves and coarse wood shavings may also seem like a fit, but those usually won’t light with sparks alone. You’d typically need the open flame of a match or lighter to get them going.

4. Move the Rod, Not the Scraper

I often see beginners throwing more tinder around than sparks. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to correct that flawed technique. If you hold the scraper still and pull the rod away (imagine you’re pulling the cord to start a chainsaw or push mower) you won’t knock the tinder all over the place. You’ll still get your shower of hot sparks, without the destructive follow-through of the scraper.

How to make a wood whistle

Take my word for it, carving a whistle from elder is an empowering activity, one that traces the handiwork of our ancestors and resounds in you long after the note has disappeared into the autumn air. And it’s dead simple. All you need is a penknife and a pair of eyes.

Elder is extremely common and easy to identify. Look around roadside verges, parks, woods, wastelands and railway lines for a bush-like, shrubby tree. It has oval-shaped, serrated leaves that grow in opposite pairs and a cracked, corky bark that's grey-brown in colour. The telltale squishy removable pith, which makes it such an ideal whistle making material, runs through its core.

Use a straight branch a bit thicker than your index finger and around ten centimetres long. At this width the pith inside should be at its widest, taking up most of the cross-section. The ratio is important; the tube needs to be hollow enough to create a decent whistle, but not so thin that it splits during its creation. Ideally, the wood will be two or three millimetres thick.

With a penknife, shave away the outer bark and use a sharpened stick to push out the pith in the middle to leave a clear, wooden tube. Now cut the ‘voicing mouth’ two centimetres in from one end by slicing vertically down onto the tube at 90º and meeting this line with a 45º cut. Repeat until the hole resembles a smile that exposes the hollow tube within.

Next, find a round stick that is a touch wider than the end of the whistle and strip away the outer bark until it fits in the tube all the way up to edge of the voicing mouth. Then slice it a flat top with one or two decisive strokes and push it snugly into place. Cover the other end and blow. The flat surface allows the air to hit the voicing mouth cleanly, whereupon it splits to produce the whistle noise.

Regardless of where you source your elder, make a patch of woodland your workshop. Carving is one of the most therapeutic pastimes possible. It is psycho- and physiotherapy, pulling us out of our everyday worries and stresses with gentle focus. The level of concentration required also renders the work delightfully silent labour, leaving our ears open to the sounds of nature all around.

Part of the thrill of British woodland is the stark relief it gives us from our everyday existence, imparting a non-human otherness. Watching the industry of animals in autumn, even one so common as the grey squirrel or ground beetle reminds us of the mind-bogglingly varied contemporaries we share our planet with.

The elder tree has long been thought to be the favourite dwelling place of other, more mystical creatures. Faeries were once said to love the music from flutes made of this wood above all others. After some adjustments, the whistle should work wonderfully, sending sylvan notes through the trees. An elder whistle produces an organic, woody note, closer to that of a birdcall than anything else. Far from scaring away the wildlife, it is as if you’ve found the language of the forest itself.

Making and playing a whistle allows us to bottle something of the joy of the wood even when you return home. For a moment at least, when you take the whistle from a shelf and blow it, the walls and furniture of the room fade away you are back in the trees.

How to Build An Emergency Shelter

You could be out in the woods you discover that you are lost. Or perhaps you’re driving along a rural road and your car stalls or gets a flat tyre. Maybe you’re doing some canoeing and it overturns on the lake, forcing you to swim to shore after which you find you’re many miles away from your camp and anyone else.

Regardless of the situation, when you’re stuck outdoors away from civilisation, lodging, or nearby help, you may need to build an emergency shelter. Especially when the weather conditions are cold and wet, or will be soon due to an approaching storm or nightfall, an emergency shelter could literally be a life saver. Here’s how to build a good one that will offer you protection from the elements and hold you over temporarily until you can get to safety or get rescued.

State of mind

Before you get started on a suitable shelter, though, you must be in the right frame of mind. Okay, so you’ve gotten into a sticky situation. The first thing you must resist is the urge to panic or make a hasty decision that makes a bad situation worse. Rather, do this instead:

• Stop and breathe slowly for a couple of minutes. Accept the situation as it is, and calm yourself. Think clearly and rationally.
• Assess your surroundings. What kind of environment are you in? Forest? Mountains? Countryside? What’s the weather and temperature like? How much daylight remains?
• What materials do you have with you? What’s out in the environment that you can use?

Choose a suitable location

Now that you’ve gotten your mental bearings, you can begin planning your shelter. And that first requires picking a location. This is the part where the evaluation you performed earlier comes into play. You’ll want to set up your shelter on dry ground, out of the wind if possible, and near resources such as trees and bushes. If a stream of clean drinking water is nearby, even better.

Assess your materials

The purpose of an emergency shelter isn’t to be all fancy and super comfortable. It’s to get you through the night alive and stave off hypothermia. So don’t worry about having the perfect materials lying around, since all you need is the basics. First, check your own belongings. Do you have a weather parka/poncho? Emergency blanket? Any kind of tarp or plastic bags that can act as covering?

Assess your environment

Now, look at the surrounding environment. Do you have tree branches, boughs, ferns, dead wood, leaves, and bushes around? Is there any “natural” shelter around such as an overhang, rock wall, or cave that can act as part of, or all of the shelter?

Decide what kind of shelter to build

After you’ve evaluated your location, materials, and environment, now it’s time to decide what kind of shelter to build. Keep in mind that it may be cold, dusk may be approaching, or you may be tired, hurt, or ill. So again, nothing fancy, just a quick overnight shelter to protect from the elements. There are dozens of outdoor shelter types you could build ranging from simple to complex, but the one of the quickest to construct is a basic double lean-to or A-frame shelter.

The A-frame shelter, 

For an A-frame, you’ll need to start with a long, thick branch or log about one and a half times your body length. This is the backbone of your shelter. Then, either prop one end against something sturdy like a fallen tree or an upright tree at a low angle and the other end into the ground. Next, place smaller branches along the sides to form “ribs.” The ribs or the walls should be lined up along both sides so that the skeleton of the shelter takes on an “A” shape.

Once the frame of the shelter is erected, you then begin filling in the space with leaves, branches, moss, and ferns. Keep working until you have the entire shelter covered, as you’ll need to keep the wind and rain out, and also trap heat from a fire if you can manage to build one. If you have a tarp, garbage bag, or poncho, you can drape it over the shelter for added insulation. And make the shelter as compact as possible, to help retain body heat. Of course, if there are others with you, then alter the size accordingly.

Try to be comfortable

You’ve got a shelter that should keep the wind, rain, and snow off of you, but it will still be quite cold.  So be sure to insulate your body from the cold ground, which sucks away body heat quickly. Lay down a bed of the same materials you used for the frame right on the ground to lay atop of. Bundle up under an emergency blanket or anything extra on hand, And of course get a fire started if at all possible. Be sure to build the fire close enough to the shelter so that you get some of the radiant heat, but not so close that your shelter catches fire.

When dawn breaks, you might be a bit worse for wear, but you’ll be alive. You feel a sense of accomplishment that you were able to take care of yourself (and others if they’re with you). And you can reassess your situation anew, and determine the best plan to get back to safety.

3 Handy Tips for Ferrocerium Rods

Ferrocerium rods are a favourite fire starter among many outdoor and survival enthusiasts. Ferrocerium is a man-made metallic material that produces sparks in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit when it’s scraped with a rough surface or a sharp edge. The ferrocerium recipe varies by manufacturer, but it’s generally 50 percent cerium, 25 percent lanthanum, and 19 percent iron, with small amounts of praseodymium, neodymium, and magnesium. The most common use of this material is as the flint in cigarette lighters. And while a butane lighter may work best in most fire-starting situations, a “Ferro rod” makes a great back-up. Here are three things to keep in mind when using a Ferro rod to start a fire.

Pick The Best Tinder: It might seem odd to use natural plant fuzz as tinder, but it is truly one of your best choices for getting a flame started, and works as well as cotton balls or dryer lint. These fibrous and fluffy materials of botanical origin are the perfect fuel to allow the sparks to “stick” and begin burning. Cattail seed down, goldenrod fluff, and milkweed down are among my favourites to use. Just collect a little bit when it’s dry, and store it in a water-tight container for use in fire starting.

Move The Rod, Not The Scraper: Rather than pushing the scraper against the rod toward your tinder, pull the rod across the scraper toward yourself. You’ll still provide a hot shower of sparks, but avoid knocking your tinder all over the place with your follow-through.

In The Deep Cold: Can’t get your butane lighter to work at 10F? That’s because butane will begin to gel once temperatures get into the teens. If the butane gels, you may be able to warm it up by placing it inside your clothing for a while. Or you could just move to your ferrocerium rod, which is unaffected by temperature extremes, and even works when wet.

How do you use your Ferro rods? Let me know your method by leaving a comment.

How to Track Wild Animals in the UK

Incessant rain. Muddy ground. Diminishing hours of daylight. With the headlong plunge into inclement weather almost upon us, staying in might seem the only sensible course of action at the moment. But get outside and you can find the traces of a hidden world almost everywhere you look.

The ability to track wild animals – the ultimate huntsman’s hack – is akin to learning a new language. It’s simply a process of familiarising yourself with patterns. Once learned, this endlessly rewarding skill is never forgotten; instead it stays with you, deepening your connection to the landscape and the creatures we share this earth with.

Recent rain and the mud it creates provides a good canvas, especially if you find a stretch of it before any dog walkers arrive. Get up early enough even in the heart of a city and you can find easy-to-follow records. I’ve discovered roe deer slots on Hampstead Heath before, as well as (inexplicably) a single badger print on the edge of a muddy puddle by Regents Canal. But for obvious reasons, rural areas are the most productive, having the highest density of animals and being less disturbed by humans. Head for the intersections between habitats: the field and forest, the forest and stream, the stream and the field.

Areas of loam soil receive clearest impressions. Look for prints around walls, hedges, gateposts and at the edges of woods. Investigate any ‘runs’, paths cut by regular animal use, leading to and from feeding and breeding grounds. Telltale signs are flattened grass, holes pushed through thicker vegetation and clumps of hair trapped in low fencing wire.

The best times to be out are at sunrise and just before sunset, when the height of the sun shows up prints better. Record any you might find so you identify them properly at home. Familiarity is the key to learning this language. Photograph it alongside something that adds scale, such as a coin.

A good starting point in both town and country is to look for the fox. At first you may take them for a dog’s print, but a fox’s will be longer and more slender, 5cm long and 4cm wide. There will also be a separation between the front two pads and the two outer pair; a matchstick placed between them will touch neither. In a dog’s print, it would bisect them all. As winter approaches you may even see the traces of hair pressed in between pads as their coats thicken for the colder months.

A fox's print

Once you have your eye in, it becomes addictive. There is a sense of excitement in following the prints as far as you can, recreating the movements and mindset of wild animals. It’s exactly what our ancestors did when hunting: reading the ground, understanding how prey or predator moved. Nowadays we may be hunting with a camera rather than a spear, but its no less rewarding to lift yourself from the worries and stresses of our human world for an hour or two.

Soon you find yourself on the lookout for other British mammals – the bear-like print of the badger; red, fallow, muntjac and roe deer; squirrels and stoats; wild boar; rabbits and hares. In Wales once, while chancing to look over the bank of a river, I found the clearest imprints of an otter. You could even see where it had stopped and listened to my approach, the point it turned its head recorded an arc of water droplets in the sand.

A fresh otter print

More edgy was a night I spent in a wood in Scotland. Over breakfast the next day the landowner delighted in showing me photographs of big cat prints that he said he’d taken close to where I’d pitched up camp.

Autumn is a time of industry in the outside world so there’s no better time to pick up this language. Have a go at learning some of the prints below and set out to see what you can find.

Wood Ear Mushrooms

Wood Ear mushrooms: hailed as an anti-inflammatory

"Snow for a hundred days". "Britain braced for the worst winter EVER".

These are the kind of headlines writ large on our screens at the moment. I’ll let you into a secret: I love snow. I’m sure it’d be different if I hadn’t just drained my finances on a log-burning stove and recently spent a day sourcing a decent, reasonable wood supplier.

OK, I dread the collective panic, insane driving and strangling heating bills that’ll result from the drop in temperature, but it’s not all doom and gloom when the landscape turns monochrome. Take wild food. Even in the sparest of the seasons, there are things to be found out there that can spice up your life and, with some basic culinary skill, warm the cockles.

Mushrooms and fungi are something of a foraging specialism. And for good reason. Names like Panther Cap, Death Cap and the gruesomely monikered Destroying Angel are more than mere fickle folk names. Containing high levels of the lethal "amatoxin", these little wonders are responsible for nearly all deaths due to mushroom poisoning in humans, with grim and often irreversible symptoms. Call me cautious but I tend to avoid anything that looks remotely like them or even exhibits similar growing locations. I go for "safe" options. And by safe I mean impossible to confuse with anything that’s going to require an immediate liver transplant.

One such fungus, Auricularia auricula-judae, is a hardy bugger. It grows all year and seems largely untroubled by winter. In fact, the best crop of it I ever found was in a sheltered, snowy wood. When I was a kid it was called Jew’s Ear, but a recent realisation that this may have derived from a pejorative Middle Ages reference to all fungi as "Jew’s meat" has seen it re-branded. Now it’s called Wood Ear, Sow’s Ear and Jelly Ear. Notice anything? The presence of "ear" is still there and once located, the reason is clear. This unmistakable brown - sometimes pinkish-brown - fungus has the cold, soft, velvety texture of a human ear and is always a source of intrigue when passed around friends or discovered by surprise in a jacket pocket a few weeks after picking.

It grows abundantly in thick, rubbery, stem-less seams on dead elder branches, with some claiming its less politically correct name was a derivative of Judas’ Ear, a reference to the disciple who hanged himself from a tree. The quick-growing and ever-colonising elder is found pretty much everywhere: on the edges of fields and woods, even in the cities and towns where it is cut back at great expense from roads and railways and left to decay in piles. This makes the fungus that grows on it one of our most prolific.

Pick the larger specimens but leave the small ears to ensure a continual supply – they will be fully grown in a matter of days. You only need a decent handful to make a great, healthy winter-warmer soup. In fact, Wood Ear, as it is known in China and Japan, has long been much prized for its culinary and medicinal benefits. Hailed as an anti-inflammatory, it is eaten to relieve tonsillitis, swelling, but is also regarded as a powerful anti-carcinogen, used to prevent and treat tumours.

In the west, a recent influx of eastern restaurants, Thai in particular, means that you have probably eaten it before, although you may not have recognised it.

Chains such as Wagamama use it in their soups. When cooked, it takes on a black translucent nature and although its texture is a bit odd, it provides a perfect vehicle for flavours. Demand is such that in the typically skewed and roundabout way, many restaurants are now paying to import this fungus from halfway around the world when it actually grows unstoppably outside our doors.

When you get home with your haul, wash the fungus, trim away the hard edge where it joined the branch, pat dry and slice thinly. Fry plenty of chilli and shallots in oil with lardons or sliced bacon. Add the fungus and, after a few minutes, some chicken stock and egg noodles. Chuck in some broccoli if you like, and a dash of fish sauce and lemon juice. When all has cooked through, season and add plenty of fresh, chopped coriander.

The resultant nourishing and good-for-you hot and sour soup is not only delicious but it will keep you going whatever the weather outside. And all for practically nothing.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, energy companies.

10 Tips to Make a Fire in a Tough Situation

ALWAYS BE THINKING ABOUT THE NEED FOR YOUR NEXT FIRE. THIS HELPS US TO BE PREPARED WITH OUR SKILLS AND ABILITY, TOOLS, AND EXPERIENCE TO LIGHT A FIRE EFFICIENTLY WHEN IT COUNTS THE MOST.

When the weather is great and you have all the time in the world, most anyone can light a fire. But when it’s raining or snowing, your hands are shaking, your decision-making abilities are compromised, and the ground is soaked – and you desperately need a fire – it can be a frustrating, difficult, and often impossible chore.

Fire is life. With it, you can dry out wet clothing, keep hypothermia at bay, disinfect water to drink, and provide a psychological boost in a dire situation.

If you ever hope to be able to make a fire in a tough situation, when the chips are down, you need to know how to make a fire the right way.  It’s all well and good that you have the latest piece of gear that can make a spark under water, but if you can’t make a fire from that spark, who cares?  If you can’t nurture an ember into flame and create a sustained fire, you’re dead.

Here are 10 tips that can help you make a fire in a tough situation:

• Think Fire.  Always be thinking about the need for your next fire.  Sure it might be a beautiful day, but how will you make fire if you have to?  Having a mindset that you will be required to create a fire helps us to be prepared with our skills and ability, tools, and experience to light a fire efficiently when it counts the most.

• Carry Fire Tools.  To make fire we need an ignition source, fuel, and oxygen. What ways can you easily ignite a fire?  What are the various tools you are carrying that create a flame or spark? A lighter? A ferrocerium rod? Flint and Steel? Have back up tools and carry them with you. I have a small leather pouch that I use as a fire kit. It contains a Flint and Steel, some petroleum jelly soaked cotton balls, and a couple of Sulphur Matches. I also carry a small butane lighter in my pocket.

• Think Simple.  When visiting South America I was watching a man prepare to start a fire.  I was hoping to learn some ancient Mayan fire-starting technique. Instead he pulls out an ordinary butane lighter. The expression on my face  must have been priceless. ¡Es sencillo! he says. “It’s simple!” He was right. In a survival situation, use the simplest way you have to ignite a fire. A butane lighter with an adjustable flame is a lifesaver.

• Collect Tinder as You Find it.  Even if you don’t plan on having to light a fire, hiking with a “Think Fire” mindset means that we get in the habit of collecting fine, dry tinder as we hike.  Ideal tinder materials are resin-rich fatwood, birch bark, cedar bark, tinder fungus, Old Man’s Beard tree moss. dried pine resin pieces, cattails, an abandoned bird’s nest, dead branches at the inside base of conifer trees, dry grass, and the like. Carry the tinder in a safe dry place. I use an old leather pouch  with a drawstring closure that has been wax treated. I also drop a few of those silica desiccant packets into the bottom of the sack to reduce moisture further. You can carry the bag tied to your belt or on a lanyard around your neck. If weather is poor, stick the bag under your coat to keep the tinder warm and dry.

• Protect Your Fire Making.  While you keep your tinder protected under your coat, in a pocket or in a tinder bag, locate the best place to build the fire.  Use a large stand of trees, a rock wall, or the opening of a cave to shelter the fire from wind, driving rain, or snow. Don’t build a fire under tree boughs full of snow – unless you want the fire extinguished by a mini avalanche of snow when you least expect it. If you have a tarp, set it up. It can protect the fire and reflect heat back to you.  Other members of your group could build a shelter from natural materials that could provide protection from the elements.

• Fire making is more than Producing an Ember.  Producing an ember is not creating a sustainable fire.  Many people practice sparking a piece of cotton with a fire steel, or creating an ember from a primitive hand drill or bow and drill. These are beneficial skills to have.  However you know as well as I do, that catching a spark or creating an ember is only the start.  Don’t neglect the important skills of transferring spark and ember to tinder, nurturing the ember to flame, and then patiently building a sustainable fire.

• Master the Tinder Bundle.  Take a look at the type of material that a small bird collects to make a nest.  Those are the same kinds and size of materials that we should collect to make a tinder bundle that could receive an ember or spark to create a flame.  Master the art of nest making like a bird. Try different materials to make the tinder bundle or birds nest.  Scrapings from birch bark or cedar or Old Man’s Beard tree moss can be placed in the center of the nest and will most easily welcome that spark or ember.  Once the spark is in the nest, be gentle, have patience, don’t flood the nest with billows of your moist breath in an attempt to have the ember take hold.  Protect the ember like a valuable jewel in the nest, because it is!

• Build a Hearth. Clear the fire making area from snow and create a fire hearth or platform of dry wood to get the fire up off the wet ground. Take some dry wood, about 18 inches long and an inch or so in diameter and make a “raft” of sorts on the ground that covers a larger area than the size of your expected fire. This helps prevent your dry tinder and other fuel from absorbing moisture from the ground.

• Prepare Fuel for the Flame.  Collect various size branches from dead standing trees.  If it’s raining or has recently snowed, you’ll find the driest branches at the inside base of conifer trees. Once you have a flame in the tinder bundle, you will need to feed it this dry wood starting from a very small size and increasing in diameter until the fire is sustainable.  Have patience.  Don’t fuss too much with the bundles of fuel.  Let the fire do its thing. Leave the branches 12-24 inches long so you can reposition them around the tinder bundle.

• Practice, Practice.  When you can consistently find tinder, kindling, and larger fuel in your familiar forest environment, and you are able to start a fire under the best of circumstances, then start applying these techniques to more adverse conditions.  Challenge yourself.  Keep practicing until it’s second nature. Go out hiking in the rain and build a fire. Use only one match. Practice building a fire with very little daylight left, or in the dark.  There’s no telling what sort of difficult situation you might find yourself in and have to build a lifesaving fire.

May a fire always be burning in your heart – and on your hearth.

I hope this post will encourage you to prepare for making fires in tough situations. If you know anyone who might benefit from this post then please share it with friends on Twitter, Facebook, etc.