Fire steels and methylated spirits

[Watertank]

Will fire steels light methylated spirits in a trangia or similar stoves?

[DanShell]

Will fire steels light methylated spirits in a trangia or similar stoves?

Yes

[icefest]

Most of the time.

As the spark can only light vaporised metho, you need to have some vaporisation happening which is hard when it's really cold out.

It might take a couple of extra goes but usually works, some carbon felt might increase the surface area enough to make it go on the first strike.

[Watertank]

Great, thanks for the replies. I felt a bit of a dill on a recent trip overseas when I had the metho and the stove but I had left matches at home not wanting to carry them on the plane...

[Gadgetgeek]

an empty bic or zippo works as well, but you might loose some hair on your hand.

[ErichFromm]

I find ferro rods easier to use for this than lighters - you can throw a spark but throwing a zippo is not a good idea

[Gadgetgeek]

No doubt about that!

[Travis22]

As mentioned above the colder it gets the harder it is to light metho with just a spark. In the snow it can be a real pain sometimes!

[corvus]

I only use "fire steels" and have found that they will ignight many things with ease however what type of burner are you attempting to use ?

[Watertank]

Corvus, I have one of the Tato Alcohol Wick stoves sold by Tier gear.

[corvus]

With that burner the solution is easy I believe, scrunch up a sheet of TP (breaks down the fibers) and sit it on top of your burner scrape some ferro on it then create a spark you should get a flame in no time and stove ignition

[Watertank]

Thanks for all the advice; fire steel purchased and tested - it lights metho on this stove without any problem.

[corvus]

Good one eh!!

[Zone-5]

Any one recommend a very good fire-steel?

[Bubbalouie]

Any one recommend a very good fire-steel?

I have a genuine exotac nano striker and an aliexpress imitation (same basic design doesn't have the branding on it).

The aliexpress one is pretty rough in terms of build quality (poor tolerances and anodising) but actually works really well, I'd say better than the exotac actually.

[zebee]

I rather like the Light My Fire knife and firesteel combo.

The knife is a decent cooking and general knife, the firesteel works reliably. Including lighting the Trangia!

(Almost certainly too horribly heavy for ultralighters, fine for me)

[Gadgetgeek]

there are only a few manufacturers of firesteels. In general, the light my fire ones are quite good, as are most that are available without handles. but they all require testing before relying on them. Since the exact ratio in the alloy, and the hardness of the rod matter quite a bit when it comes to performance, I've found there can be a significant difference between two rods.

[thejungleisneutral]

Scrape or sand the black stuff off and the rods themselves all work pretty easily when needed.

Last year I tested a bunch of brand name ferro rods against their cheap and nasty Chinese clones in both "workbench" and field conditions and found very little difference in the efficiency of the ferro rod itself when used to light dry stringybark bullswool, although the quality of the things it was glued to like plastic handles and "magnesium" bars and such varied wildly.

The only caution I have to add with using a ferro rod to light a metho stove is to make sure that the person using said ferro rod is adept in its use lest they knock over their Trangia burner trying to "get the b@$tard to light!!!"

[corvus]

Any one recommend a very good fire-steel?

I only use el cheapo ones and they all work however the cheapest one has only a very small ferro insert still works but limited life.