KSF Fire Kit
By Reid Hyken
Nessmuk said “The more you carry in your head, the less you need carry on your back.”
There is great wisdom in that teaching, especially if you resist the urge to expand upon it. Many people have reinterpreted it to mean that the smartest outer therefor carries nothing.
That’s not what he said nor is it a wise choice.
In our sister publication, Forest and Stream Magazine, I shared the short story To Build A Fire by Jack London. In the story we share the frustration and fear of needing fire to preserve life. The man in the story carried much less than he needed, perhaps thinking he could outwit nature.
I’ve also been in circumstances a few times where building a fire was far more than a convenience, it was a necessity. Hypothermia and frostbite are unforgiving demons that await the outer who isn’t prepared.
That article and a those experiences lead me to suggesting that Derrick at Knives Ship Free.com develop an emergency fire making kit.
The KSF Fire Kit is the result of these discussions. The kit is shipped in an OtterBox 1000, a waterproof box that is quite small and handy. The box is common, what’s inside isn’t.
The Fire Kit contains items that WILL start a fire in the most adverse of conditions.
There are sufficient materials to start several fires in the kit, and bluntly some that aren’t supplied will work just fine in normal conditions. The KSF Fire Kit is what you want to have when you need to build the fire that may save your life.
Under stress, it’s natural to lose a good bit of the skills you have under ideal conditions, you’re cold, wet, a bit scared and frustrated. As much as we would like to think otherwise, it happens to the best of us.
The KSF Fire Kit is CHEATING. That’s fine because there are no rules when it gets right down to surviving a dangerous situation, the only goal is coming out alive and they don’t award points for style.
I did a lot of testing of the components of the Fire Kit while we developed them so I know they work. What I hadn’t done prior to yesterday was test the kit in bad conditions.
The bright yellow OtterBox sat patiently in the Holt (a great way to carry an OtterBox) bolted to my Golok Sheath. This was the intended way to carry a Fire Kit, attached to your everyday woods gear, ready to be used when the time comes.
Yesterday we got as close as we’ve been in weeks, a steady rain with 20 to 25 MPH winds. In the woods, this is the weather that quickly soaks your clothes and with a bit of a temperature drop and those winds you start shedding core temperature in a hurry. Hypothermia weather if the thermometer was about 30 degrees cooler.
This is the perfect time to see if the Fire Kit would work as well as we expected.
Before starting, I built in a handicap. The OPEN Fire Kit went into a bucket of water which was then emptied on my pile of tinder, kindling and fuel. I wanted EVERYTHING to be very wet, even the ground where I was to build the fire.
The fire kit will get a fire started for you, but you still need to collect kindling of increasing sizes and fuel to sustain the fire you start. I collected a small amount as I had no real need for a large warming fire and as I have said many times, the difference between a small fire and a big one is the amount of fuel you supply.
A three inch diameter bundle of dead grasses and stalks would suffice as well as a small pile of twigs and sticks in sizes from stalks to thumb diameter to get the fire going. I stopped at one inch diameter fuel knowing that if I can get that burning, the rest is just a matter of adding more fuel as needed.
In the wilds, the only place you find to start the fire may well be soaking wet as well and wet ground will put out a fledgling fire as certain as a bucket of water.
That’s why the Fire Kit contains a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil. I shaped it into a “Sled” which will hold the fire when I first start it. The wet ground will have no effect and the aluminum will take quite a while to burn through; by that time the fire will be strong enough to sustain itself on the wet ground.
Shaping it into a sled was easy, I used the inside cover of the OtterBox as a mold and formed the sled with my fingers. If I was in a hurry I would have been a lot less neat about it and simply rolled the sides in to stiffen the piece of foil so I can move it once lit.
The next step is to maul one of the flat round “Tinder Disks.” Tearing/twisting and splitting the pad to expose the softer looser inner material that will easily catch a spark. The “Tinder Disk” works much like petroleum jelly soaked cotton but is much neater and easier to carry. Once a spark hits the fluffed area it steadily begins to create a larger flame.
Wind is an issue as well. The Fire Kit contains business card sized “Fire Cards,” which are obviously impregnated with a waxy substance to make them waterproof and serve as another source of lasting fire to dry the natural materials. Fire Cards are also printed with thumbnail instructions for use of the Fire Kit components in case you forget under the stress of an emergency.
Folding the Fire Card in half allowed me to make it into a small wind break, perfect to protect the fragile initial flames as they form on the Tinder Disk.
The Firesteel supplied with the Fire Kit isn’t the steel we’re most accustomed to. Derrick decided instead to go with the new Misch Metal rod that creates a hotter more intense spark. It does take a bit of practice to master the slightly different feel but once you “get it” you’ll understand why it was chosen.
The piece of hacksaw blade is a good choice as well, the teeth bite into the rod quite well. I tried using a knife blade on the wet rod and had a difficult time because the water acts as a lubricant making generating sparks more difficult.
Once I got my Misch Metal stroke right, it only took two tries before a spark settled into the waiting Tinder Disk and began to develop into a flame.
With the Tinder Disk and Fire Card burning, I now need to add in a Fuel Bar. The Fuel Bar will provide a longer lasting flame as it’s more dense. I fold the bar lengthwise to expose the edges to the flame and lean it on the Fire Card to assure air space to fan the flames.
This picture demonstrates how well the Fire Card protects the fledgling flame from the wind, notice how it’s being blown horizontal just above the card.
My kindling is still soaking wet and has been exposed to the continued rain while I built the fire this far along. The best I could do to dry it was to give the bundle a violent shake to remove as much water as I could before carefully laying it across the fire.
It didn’t take me long to realize that the kindling was a lot more wet than I thought. In order to burn soaking wet kindling, the fire needs to boil off the water which is absorbing heat from the burning fuel bar.
Kindle Sticks are wax impregnated sisal rope. To properly use a Kindle Stick, you can unwind the stick into three smaller sticks which can be added to the fire. Sisal burns hotter and is very difficult to blow out, making Kindle Sticks an ideal “Booster” for such situations.
I added another Fuel Bar and a Kindle Stick to get my natural kindling bundle burning and added in the larger sticks and such, keeping in mind that they too would need time to dry before igniting.
In the end, my attempt at making a fire in a steady rain with soaking wet fuel and Fire Kit components was successful. There were a few moments where I was concerned that I would fail, but by using the components provided and paying attention to what I was doing it did work out.
I’ve made thousands of fires over the years and am quite confident that I can make fire whenever I need. Adding the KSF Fire Kit to my gear gives me that added level of capability. Sometimes what you carry in your head is better when you have the right thing on your back to help apply the knowledge.
If the guy in the story would have had a KSF Fire Kit, he may well have survived, then again we would lose a great short story.
As soon as I have restocked my Fire Kit it’s going to become a permanent addition to my gear as well as another for my truck.