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I purchased a few different fire starting devices recently and have tried them out, so I thought I would share in case anyone is in the market. The cheapest one is the one I like the best, and the one that seems to work the best. It throws a pretty good bit of sparks, and is pretty consistent every time strike it. I will have to fool around some more and make sure I don't change my mind, but I think my ratings of them will remain the same. I hope my links work. My camera is broken and my phone camera sucks so I can't include any pictures:
My favorite one is this: http://www.rei.com/product/810628
Next is this: http://www.soloscientific.com/
Anyway, it works about the same, but not as easy to use. They are all easy to use, but the striker is located so that you have to hold it at the right angle to get good sparks, where the first one throws sparks no matter what angle you use or how you hold it. However, this one is cool because it screws together and is real compact. You could tuck this away just about anywhere, then unscrew and use as needed. I am kind of torn between this and the one above.
Next you have this: http://www.rei.com/product/775077
It works about the same way, but it is larger and more bulky, not very ergonomic, and didn't seem to throw as much spark consistently.
O.K. I guess this was actually the cheapest, but you have to have a knife of something like that to use with it, so it isn't completely self contained. It works O.K. I suppose, and I will keep a couple around in various BOB's and other places for redundancy. It's only like seven bucks so I think it would be worth buying.
Overall, they all work O.K. but the first one is what I would get if I had to have only one of them. The one I thought about getting, but didn't, was the blastmatch. It looked like it could be good, but I opted to try the others first. So, I hope this is helpful to anyone thinking about getting something like this.
My favorite one is this: http://www.rei.com/product/810628
Next is this: http://www.soloscientific.com/
Anyway, it works about the same, but not as easy to use. They are all easy to use, but the striker is located so that you have to hold it at the right angle to get good sparks, where the first one throws sparks no matter what angle you use or how you hold it. However, this one is cool because it screws together and is real compact. You could tuck this away just about anywhere, then unscrew and use as needed. I am kind of torn between this and the one above.
Next you have this: http://www.rei.com/product/775077
It works about the same way, but it is larger and more bulky, not very ergonomic, and didn't seem to throw as much spark consistently.
O.K. I guess this was actually the cheapest, but you have to have a knife of something like that to use with it, so it isn't completely self contained. It works O.K. I suppose, and I will keep a couple around in various BOB's and other places for redundancy. It's only like seven bucks so I think it would be worth buying.
Overall, they all work O.K. but the first one is what I would get if I had to have only one of them. The one I thought about getting, but didn't, was the blastmatch. It looked like it could be good, but I opted to try the others first. So, I hope this is helpful to anyone thinking about getting something like this.