How to Use a Ferro Rod: The New Zealand Specific Guide.
Ferro rods require skill and knowledge to use effectively, but once you’ve got the basics under control they are a reliable, fun and effective way to establish fire in both recreational and emergency situations.
Regardless of temperature, altitude, and humidity, Ferro rods will reliably produce molten sparks, making them a great back-up tool in survival situations.
Down here in the forests of New Zealand, things are a little bit different. We can have high rainfall throughout the year and our forest floor is often damp and cold - making tough conditions for getting a fire started. Therefore we highly recommend practicing how to light a fire using a ferro rod before going bush.
Read on to learn more.
How To Use A Ferro Rod:
Tools you will need:
• Ferro rod
• Knife, axe, or saw
• Striker (optional)
Collect the Fuel
Preparation is everything. A spark from a ferro rod is near useless if you don’t have something ready to catch that spark and turn it into a flame, and that flame is useless without a larger fuel to transfer it to - that’s basic firemaking 101.
By far the easiest way to create that initial flame from a spark is to use a pre-made tinder ball or some kind of fire kit. These will typically accept a spark from a ferro rod and will hold the flame for a good amount of time, but those luxuries aren’t always available so it pays to learn how to start from zero.
Assuming you’re in the bush (and you’re not in a zone where open fire is prohibited), wood is going to be your main fuel.
Obviously the drier the wood the better, so look for dead standing trees or dead branches that are suspended off the ground. Sometimes a good bit of dry wood can be tough to find, so keep hunting around. If you’re near a stream you can sometimes find bits of driftwood that have been deposited onto the bank during the last flood, so check these areas too.
To get a starting fire bundle you’re only going to need fine twigs and sticks.
Aim for anything from the width of a piece of spaghetti up to the width of your wrist. Larger pieces can be broken down to the right size later. This can be necessary to access the dry center of the wood which will make the fire starting process much easier.
How much to collect is up to you. If you want to keep the fire small for cooking, you won’t need a whole lot.
If the fire is for cooking + warmth, and will be burning for several hours, you’ll need to collect a good amount of wood. With a bit of experience you’ll soon get a feel for how much you’ll need.
Pro tip: There is no such thing as too much tinder & kindling. Once you think you have enough, double it. If your fire dies before getting to the finger-width kindling stage it’s a real hassle to build it up again.
2. Prepare The Wood
Seperate your wood into piles based on thickness. You need to step the fire up gradually from the tinder stage to the log stage
Your piles should look a little like this: tinder/shavings > spaghetti > pencil > finger > sausage > wrist.
It helps to have these piles organised and within reach of the fire.
Wood of different thicknesses for fire starting with a ferro rod.
Processing some of the larger branches into smaller sticks will help. The inside layers of a stick/branch tend to be drier which is required in the earlier stages of getting the fire going. Batoning with your knife allows the most control when processing wood down to this size.
As we mentioned earlier, ferro rods require some kind of material to catch the spark and turn it into a flame.
If there’s one thing to remember from this article, it’s this: extra fine wood scrapings will make your life easy. Set aside a small and dry piece of kindling that can be used to produce scrapings, and another that can be used to make a featherstick or two. We’ll cover this in the next step.
Pro tip: Proper organisation can make or break your fire. Ensuring that the fuel is collected and ready before you attempt to start your campfire will save you a lot of hassle.
3. Catching the Spark: Wood Shavings and Feathersticks
The key trick with ferro rods is to catch the spark with a very fine flammable material. Take note of this, because it’s the #1 thing people get wrong when learning.
Wood Shavings:
Wood scrapings collected on a sheet of tree bark.
They’re easy to produce and can be relied upon to produce a flame, so when you’re using only the resources you’ll find in the bush, wood shavings are a good option. The easiest way to produce these shavings is scraping your knife blade at a 90° angle along the edge of a dry stick. Let the shavings fall down and collect in a nice pile on a dry and clean surface. We used a piece of bark to catch the scrapings in the example shown here.
Side tip: This is also where ‘fatwood’ comes in useful. If you don’t know what fatwood is, its essentially pine wood that has been naturally impregnated with pine resin, meaning it will catch and hold a flame easily. A quick google search will provide you with more information on this, but it’s easy to find and we recommend keeping a few chunks in your fire kit.
You can also use a nest of scruffed up dry grass (or similar fine material) instead. This is a quicker way to get a flame, but such material can be hard to find depending on the environment.
Once you have your pile of wood shavings, you can flick a few sparks from the ferro rod into the middle. If you’ve done it right, this should produce a small flame, but it can take a few strikes to get the pile to catch. Now you have a flame, you need to do something with it.
Feathersticks:
Once you’ve converted a spark into a naked flame using the wood shavings, you’ll need something to transfer it to. This is where the classic featherstick comes in. We won’t go into detail here about how to make a featherstick - there are plenty of detailed tutorials online, but the rough idea is to produce a collection of thin slices of wood that increase surface area and allow a larger, hotter flame.
Holding the feather stick over the flame will quickly ignite the thin slices. You can then easily transfer it to the pre-prepared stack of kindling.
An example of a featherstick.
4. Tending to the Fire
From here the process is the same as any other campfire. Make sure you have your different sizes of firewood ready to go and carefully grow the fire until you have a good bed of coals. From here you can feed it as much or as little fuel as you require to cook or keep warm.
Summary
Ferro rods are an essential bit of gear for anybody who regularly ventures into the outdoors. They require a bit of skill and knowledge to use effectively, but as outdoorsmen we’re not afraid of a bit of a challenge. You simply can’t beat the reliability and longevity that a quality ferro rod provides, and one you’ve mastered the craft, you’ll find any excuse to bust one out and get that fire roaring!
We’ve done the hard-yards in testing and comparing different ferro rods so you don’t have to. Shop Falko ferro rods here and establish your next camp with full confidence.
