Helikon-Tex Firespark

Body heat is all important when it comes to your well-being, and another recent release from Helikon-Tex is their ‘FIRESPARK’ firesteel. Designed and tested by specialists in bushcraft and survival techniques, the new FIRESPARK firesteel is a modern rendering of classic piece of equipment. A hollow aluminium handle may be used to house water purification tablets, tinder or rolled banknotes if you want to hide them away.

Instead of the traditional carbon steel though, the FIRESPARK makes use of a long Ferrocerium rod; while Ferrocerium ‘steels’ function in a similar way to natural flint and steel in fire starting, Ferrocerium takes on the role that steel played in traditional methods and when small shavings of it are removed quickly enough the heat generated by friction is enough to ignite those shavings converting the metal to the oxide, i.e., the sparks are actually tiny pieces of burning metal.

This long spark rod, with durable handle, make starting a fire with FIRESPARK and knife a breeze; combined with my favourite bushcraft knife created for me by Josh Curry of the Athena Knife Co. in the USA, the FIRESPARK is absolutely awesome, sending a fan of sparks away with every stroke!