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There I was, overlooking the Kilauea, one km above sea level, 3700 km from the closest continent, in the middle of a vast treeless lava field. There was a pleasant yet strong breeze making the tropical Sun easier to stand. It was lunch time and I was looking forward for a hot meal after all the rough hiking.

I was well prepared with my, mostly homemade, ultra-light backpacking gears: Cobra Stove, aluminum foil wind screen, mesh pot stand and camping saucepan. Everything was perfectly calculated: with 175ml of alcohol I was good for six meals, all what was needed for an overnight back-country trip with a generous margin for errors. I had a watertight matchbox with a capacity of 20, that was more than enough. Right?

Compared to other Zen Stove designs, the Cobra is more fuel efficient. Construction is as simple but you need a primer pan (video by Don Johnston) in order to reach the inner pressure that makes the jets burning by themselves. The principle of the primer pan is simple: you let your stove sit in a (really small) bath of alcohol that you set ablaze. If the bath is too small, the stove won't get hot enough and you have to repeat the procedure, no big deal here. If the bath is too big, the stove gets too hot and you might have noticed that design don't include a relief valve. If you are lucky, you waste all your fuel in a few seconds of 50 cm flames, otherwise the stove blow up. Obviously, I tend to make small primer baths.

Back to Kilauea, first match: blown by the wind, second is OK but the primer pan gets blown off, everything is fine with the third one, except that the primer pan was too small after all... Simple math: 4*6=24; the match box won't do the trick and I must find a replacement. If you think that I could just carry a 2$ disposable cigarette lighter, you are definitely not part of the target audience and you can safely stop reading now. If your first thought that I just had to use my hammock ropes to make a bow and start a fire like the Indians used to, read on.

In high-school, I listened to Manowar. There was this song, Black Wind, Fire and Steel. I'm still not sure about what it was supposed to mean but you have to admit that it is catchy to put the key material of the industrial revolution and the fetish of all pyromaniacs in the same sentence. I was checking Think Geek, actively procrastinating, when I first saw a something called Swedish Firesteel. How could something called Firesteel not be great? I mean, something with sparks at 3000°C, that works when wet, in any weather, at any altitude. As solid packages for raw power goes, this must be right next to energon cubes. I needed to replace the match box anyway; that was enough for an excuse.

I was able to get the demo from my favorite army surplus for 10$. Every time I get into this store the dealer goes "where did you get this old Russian army coat?" and as usual, I remind him that he sold it to me. That seems to please him and he always offer me a bargain on whatever I came looking for, as long as I pay cash... My Firesteel looks similar to the one on Think Geek except that the provided striker is a plain rounded rectangle, not the serrated one. As far as I can tell, this is an older model by Light My Fire: web stores advertise Light My Fire's Firesteels with the model I have pictured.

This Firesteel is nice. It only weight 75 g and you do get a lot of bright sparks with each stroke of the striker, even when wet. Sparks fly about 20 cm away; lighting a primer pan with it is trivial. But, to inflame something more stable than methanol is something else. My first attempts to light paper took an average of 50 strikes. Toilet paper was easier to light with an average of 25 strikes. How can something that burns at 3000°C not light paper instantly? We should not confuse heat, the quantity of energy, and temperature, the heat per molecule. The few molecules in the bright sparks have a hight temperature but they don't carry much heat. Using my knife as a striker did produce more sparks and makes lighting paper a lot easier. The problem is that rubbing a knife against a metal rod destroys the sharp edge in no time. A simple solution is to carry a sacrificial edge. Fair enough. With a little filework I gave a crude edge to the striker provided with the Firesteel. The result is pretty good. I can light paper with an average of five strokes, toilet paper usually burn in two strokes. The striker is not made of tempered steel and it losses its edge faster than a knife. Fortunately, the crude bevel takes no time reshape. Rubbing against a rock would be enough; no need to add a file to the ultra light backpacking gears. The poor performance of the plain striker is probably why Light My Fire now provides a serrated one.

Even with the improved striker, you need to carry something easy to inflame. Light My Fire sells Maya Dust, a convenient tinder but also the acknowledgment that the Firesteel is more related to flint and steel than to a modern firestarter that combines knowledge of piezoelectricity with advanced polymers into a pocket small package: the cigarette lighter. The state of the art cigarette lighter also comes from Sweden; it's the Silva Storm Helios. Why do Swedes come up with all the high-tech firestarters? It probably gets really cold there. That or too much Swedish metal turned the dwellers into arsonists.