Always have your twigs and sticks close at hand before showering sparks onto the facial cotton to get your starter fire so that you can start feeding the fire right away.
Carrying some facial cotton and a ferrocerium rod with you even on a casual hike can save you a lot of misery.
Every now and then, there are news on hikers – intending on only day trips – becoming lost in the woods. There have been cases of rescuers finding them only after a night or two.
This can happen even to seasoned hikers because trails can change. Fallen trees and landslides can reshape the terrain, forcing hikers to take detours that lead them into unfamiliar territory.
Or hikers can face a mishap, tear a ligament or even break a leg and be no longer able to walk.
Humans can survive many days without food and water, so a rescue party will have time to find lost hikers.
Scraping a ferrocerium rod with the metal file of a Swiss army knife digs deeply into the rod to shave the alloy and create large, hot sparks that burn at more than 3,000°C.
And while lost, your ability to easily start a fire will improve your comfort and survivability manifold.
Even a small fire helps.
The smoke will keep mosquitoes and other biting insects at bay, letting you catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep to keep your energy levels up. Wild boar and almost every other wild animal will veer off at the first whiff of the smoke too.
In the day, adding branches with green leaves to a well-established fire will create even more smoke, enough to signal your location to rescuers searching for you.
Ferrocerium is an alloy made with cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, iron and magnesium. Unlike the flint in the striker of a lighter, which produces sparks of 180°C to 400°C, those from a ferrocerium rod burn at over 3,000°C.
For comparison, a 15cm-long ferrocerium rod versus a 3cm-long one. The longer one is easier to grip and make sparks with.
Almost any tinder is enough to get a fire going, and those little square facial cotton pieces are wondrous for this purpose.
All you have to do is place them on a firm, dry place, put the end of the ferrocerium rod on it and repeatedly scrape the rod hard to send out a shower of bright sparks onto the facial cotton. It will catch fire in seconds.
But do put as many as five or six pieces because except for the driest months, the sticks and branches you gather from the tropical jungle floor tend to be a little damp.
So you need more pieces of facial cotton to get a slow-burning starter fire that will burn off the moisture in the twigs you next add to grow the fire well.
Tip: Look for fallen branches that are not resting on the jungle floor. The tips tend to be bone dry even after rain, so break them off to feed your fire right after igniting the tinder.
Some ferrocerium rods are sold with a striker, a flat bar of hard steel for scraping the rod to get sparks. These work if you don’t have anything else suitable for scraping the rod with.
Some adventurers smear facial cotton with a blob of petroleum jelly to make them burn longer. While not crucial, it works marvellously and you will get a starter fire that lasts much longer.
A 50ml canister of petroleum jelly available at most pharmacies does not take up much carry-space, but smear a blob of it only on the centre piece because facial cotton entirely coated in petroleum jelly will not burn with the sparks of a ferrocerium rod.
Remember: The more you practise, the luckier you get. So do try starting fires with the ferrocerium rod many times instead of waiting to try it in a life or death situation.
Try other types of tinder, such as paper shreds, dry grass or leaves, and you will see how facial cotton will give you a steady, slow-burning flame for many seconds. Obviously, keep your facial cotton in a watertight bag or canister.
Avoid pulling apart the material of the facial cotton to make it fluffy. This makes it catch fire instantly but it will also burn out in the blink of an eye.
You want it to burn steadily for a few seconds so that you have time to add twigs to the initial flames, followed by progressively thicker branches to grow your fire.
Put the facial cotton on top of a few twigs or dried leaves to raise them from the ground so that the underside of the cotton will be fed with oxygen and burn well too.
Ferrocerium rods are cheap. Most retail for less than RM10, while big ones of more than 1cm in diameter and 15cm long can cost RM50 and will last so long that your grandchildren might inherit them.
Some ferrocerium rods are sold with a striker – a flat bar of hard steel secured to the rod with a lanyard – and they do work.
But if you have a multi-tool that comes with a metal file, do use that because it will scrape more material out of the rod to create big showers of sparks to easily get your fire going.
The rods come in many sizes, but be wary of the tiny ones (some are 3cm long or less) because although they are easy to carry, they can be hard to hold firmly while you scrape them.
Imagine being lost, tired, worried, dehydrated and maybe even in pain; handling a long, stout ferrocerium rod to get sparks will be a lot easier than doing it with those teeny-tiny ones.
When you no longer need your fire, remember to put it out completely and kick the ashes apart.
Never leave the potential for a wildfire behind.
