Hello all, interested in making a flint and steel fire kit. heard that you can use a file for the steel part. I was just wondering if you can use any steel. Thanks
It needs to be high carbon.
Garage springs, files and lots of other things will work and more won't work very well or won't work at all and the good stuff will have to be retempered properly if they are heated and reshaped.
Thanks, now to rummage in the garage.
To use a file you will need to grind the teeth from the side of the file or if there are no teeth just round the edges a bit. If you choose to try taking all the teeth off be careful not to let the metal get too hot because it will take the temper out and you won't get good sparks.
When you try to get sparks, remember that you are really shaving off bits of metal, not actually making sparks and it takes a fairly hard strike down the edge to make those hot metal shavings.
I was trying to get a spark with a piece of file, but all I was doing was chipping off pieces of flint. I tried it on the sharp edge and the large surface area. I was using a piece of file I had in the garage. I was able to get some small sparks by using the small piece of metal that comes with a ferrous rod that I purchased in the past tho. Thanks
Also don't try to get a spark from the tang of the file without retempering it because it isn't hardened like the rest of the file.