Fire with flint on flint?

[markinengland]

A question for those very much into the stone age.
Is it possible to make fire with flint alone?
Flint and steel is a proven and failry modern method. Sparks are produced.
Flint against flint also produces sparks. Can thse sparks make fire? Anyone ever done this?
Mark in England

[Minuteman]

Never seen anyone try. I didn't know you could get sparks from flint on flint.
 What about flint on iron pyrite?

[Stonedog]

If it sparks, it should be able to make fire...but......

It has been proven that you need something to catch the spark.....like char cloth, tinder fungus, charred punky wood, etc.....

When you strike a flint onto steel it shave off tiny, tiny bits of molten steel....those molten bits fall onto your char, thus creating a hot spot.....

I don't know if the same would happen with flint on flint....now tonight I have to try it!

It is known that Otzi carried iron pyrites in his kit to make fire.....so in essence a flint and "steel" is ancient.....although the strikers we see now a days are fairly modern....but then again, fire steels were used back to at least roman times....1st-3rd centuries.....with the classic "C" shaped striker being the most common, even when Ceasar marched on Gaul.....

[markinengland]

I haven't made sparks with flint on flint for maybe 35 years, since making sparks in the dark stopped being interesting. Maybe I'm in my second childhood because it got interesting again!
On another forum there has been some discussion about whether the sparks are really hot sparks or just a form of electrical luminescence you get when rocks like quartz are rubber together. From what I remember they certainly looked and acted like sparks. As a boy I never did get them to catch a fire but I didn't have proper tinder then. I made do with magnifying lenses and bow drills.
I must get some flint and try it again.
Mark

[Kegan]

It works, but you need certain stones. Some work, others don't. I believe qartzite on quartzite works, and jsut about any flint on something, as was metnioned, iron pyrite and ore. Alot of searching, which could be better spent practicng firction fire (weeds and sticks grow everyone, but rocks don't  )!

Check out www.wildwoodsurvival.com- they have lots of stuff on "primitive" fire. More than I could tell ya.

[markinengland]

Well, I went out and collected some flint today.
The spark of flint on steel is much better, hotter and longer lasting than that frome flint alone, but flint does seem to send a spark off that could just possibly be causght in good tinder. i think it would take a very patient person to do it and make a flame though.
Just as an after comment, I was stood in a paleolithic flint mine working today, uncovered by collapse on the North Downs. Amazing to think that men were digging flint there thousands of years ago.
Mark in England

[DanaM]

mark did you take any pictures by chance?

[markinengland]

Dana,
I didn't take my camera but I plan on going back there.
Mark

[markinengland]

I had a go tonight at making fire with flint on flint.
I didn't succeed.
My memory may be playing rticks with me but I feel that the flint I had available as a boy some 300 miles north sparked better than the stuff I have now.
Mark

[stickbender]

     Well you certainly have no problems finding flint in England!  When I was in Bognor Regis, in 91, the beach, was litterally covered in it, and hedges, by the appartments, Or I should say "flats", were full of it.  I wish I could get a train car full of that stuff.  Nice, bluish black stuff.  Try the char cloth, or some rubbed cedar bark.  The inside of the bark.  And put the Flint right on top of it, and "whack" it with another piece of Flint.  Just keep it up at a fairly steady pace.  Just a guess on my part, but it just might catch.
     I wish I was able to afford to go back there.  I loved it.  Never got to go to the Lakes District, or to Ireland, or Scotland.  Did get to go to " Wooten Under Edge ", though, "it's where me ancestors are from".Beautiful little town. 

                                                                       Stick Bender