Friction firelighting, how easy is it for you?

Hey all, last week i was out walking and i came across a pine strip of lumber out on the mountains. I decided to see if it would work as a base for a fire drill. I grabbed a nearby piece of sotol and cut it into a spindle. I used sinew and nocked the top like an arrow, tied the sinew in the nock, made thumbloops
Sotol and pine worked very well.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that from the thought of making fire to the time i had a good solid ember was about 12 minutes. I've been able to consistently make fire before, but never so quickly and easily. It's a good feeling to know that it's possible to make fire like that, but it's a real good feeling to know that you can do it without expending much effort and in a short timeframe. Now that i've got my spindle and baseboard, i can work up a good ember in a minute or two. Practice and experience have resulted in this useful skill, so remember to practice.

How much of an effort is it for you to make fire? How long does it take?

I did try it once using one of those flint scrapers, you know the flint sticks you can buy, I wasnt very succesfull but will be trying more pretty soon.

Strike master make one here
strike master

or for the uk, about halfway down the page.
Flint Spark

or if you want to think completely outside the box
try these

or this

The commando saw is pretty nifty aswell.



[edit on 18-5-2008 by Dar Kuma]

Good post DS

With my magnesium firelighter it needs a good bit scraping off the block onto tinder then getting the sparks to flash onto the tinder and shards and FZAM, it soon starts smoldering....

I'll be honest and say, so far, I haven't got a friction fire going yet...