Interesting tidbit about Coghlan's Tinder kit

[ToddM]

I bought a couple of these the other day to play with and the tinder works well seems to be the common cotton with wax and maybe some other ingrediant since if you squish them there seems to be a almost fluid substance in them.

Anyway, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why the striker was in such a large encasement, nor could I figure out why it seemed to have batting right around the striker edge. Read the instructions and they said nothing about it, just how to light the tinder and some fire starting tips. Well I was browsing the Penrith catalog and what do you know they had a identical item called a permanent match and it said fill with lighter fluid. Well then it hit me like a brick so I found some fluid filled it up and with just a little strike boom instant flame.

While I certainly would not rely on anything that needs fluid (esp. fluid that so easily evaporates) it is a interesting feature and I'm surprized Coghlan's makes zero reference to it in the manual, which is otherwise quite good. It instructs the user to use the sparks from the striker to light the tinder instead of lighting the "match" and then lighting the tinder. Which also worked very well I might add.

Pretty impressive for such a small package and low price (around $5 with 8 tinder peices). The flint is pretty small maybe 1/8" maybe smaller.

Be interesting to see how long it lasts. One downside is that if it's lit too long it gets really HOT

little heat shrink tubing might help that. Wouldn't carry it for my primary firestarter but you can't have too many.

Todd

 

[Jimbo]

I think that you are going to find some variation in the tinder supplied - kit to kit. I re-tried mine in very cold weather and couldn't get it going properly even with a large striker - no matter how much I fuzzed it. My tinder is really gummed with wax that really hardens in the cold.
Pics are here showing the rubber gasket on striker to hold in fuel:
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Rapids/5404/survival/ctk.html

I'd wondered about the permanent match thing - thanks for pointing out that it works!

 

[bill2054]

I have one of these Coghlan tinder kits. The striker gizmo is actually a miniature cigarette lighter. They go by the name of ‘metal match’ or ‘permanent match’ and you can find them at ebay. A pretty recent version was the Joe Camel metal match.

Apparently these have been around for a long time. I saw an old movie in which Humphrey Bogart lit his cigarette with a table top version, and I’m pretty sure the movie was from the 1940s.

I’m guessing that Coghlan buys them super cheap and puts them into the kit because they are so small.

And by the way, I had mine for years and didn’t know it was a lighter. I bought it, played with it, then put it away and forgot about it. Then a few months ago I was searching on ‘metal match’ online, looking for info on ferrocerium rods, when I kept getting hits on these cigarette lighters, and the little light bulb went off over my head.

Regarding the tinder- mine worked fine, even though it was several years old. However, I still prefer cotton balls/ batting (cotton wool to our friends in other lands) and Vaseline/ petroleum jelly/ petrolatum.

 

[ToddM]

When I posted this I decided to put the little guy through the paces so I loaded it up with lighter fluid and used it as much as possible over the last few days.

I have to say I was very impressed.

The lighter part of it though only worked for about 3 days on a fill of fluid. However this may have been caused by the fact I was probably lighting it 50 times a day. By the 4th day it would take quite a few strikes to get it to light. This also might be improved by a better rubber seal on the striker, the stock one looks pretty iffy and a good quality one might help a lot too.

I also tried to get what I estimate to be about 100 strikes a day out of it. The striker throws really nice sparks for it's size. I think the slot that guides the striker helps this. So after 6 days of this the rod was looking pretty thin so I removed it to inspect it. I'd say it had at least 500 strikes on it and it was probably 3/4 used up but was still useable when removed.

I also tried lighting some of the tinder while frozen in a deep freeze. It was quite hard to pull apart till my hands warmed it up a little, but I think if you squished it with your heel and then pulled it apart it would work better. I then refroze it sold and tried to light it and it did light right up no problems first time.

With 8 peices of tinder, and the striker for $4 I'd have to say it's quite a deal.