In this Fundamental Friday episode, Chris breaks down the Primitive Camping Fire Starter Kit piece by piece, showing how to use fatwood, ferro rods, char cloth, and fire plugs to reliably start a fire in any condition. He demonstrates each tool’s purpose, explains how the tin itself can be used to make new char cloth, and shares practical fire-starting tips for every camper or bushcrafter.
Welcome back to Fundamental Fridays here on the Primitive Camping and Bushcraft Podcast!
Today, we’re breaking down the Primitive Camping Fire Starter Kit — everything that’s packed inside, how it works, and why it belongs in every outdoor pack. From fatwood and ferro rods to char cloth and fire plugs, this kit is built to help you start a fire anywhere, anytime.
Chris walks through each piece of gear, demonstrates how to make shavings, explains the purpose of the ferro rod and striker, and even lights a few fires along the way. You’ll see how to use the tin itself to make fresh char cloth, and why these little fire kits make great gifts for anyone who loves the outdoors.
Whether you’re camping, hunting, or just getting started with bushcraft, this episode will help you understand not only how to build a fire—but how to be prepared when it matters most.
Check out the Primitive Camping Fire Kits and more gear at:
👉 https://www.primitive-camping.com
(upbeat music)
Welcome back to the Primitive Camping
and Bushcraft Podcast.
Today is Fundamental Fridays,
and we use this time to
go over fundamental skills
that you can use to make
your primitive camping trips
better, more fun, and more interesting.
So hang tight, pull up a
chair, and let's get to it.
All right, guys.
Well, welcome to the
Fundamental Friday episode.
Now we're gonna be
sitting here at the table
down here at Camp What the Heck.
And today I wanted to go over
the primitive camping fire
starters, the fire starter kit,
and I'll shake this
up for you guys to hear
on the podcast.
And so if you're
listening to this episode,
we will be going over
the primitive camping
and bushcraft fire kit.
If you're watching it,
you'll be able to see
everything and all the contents.
So I'll try my best to
describe it to you as we go through.
Once you open this kit up,
it is a three inch by two
inch, something like that,
like an Altoids can.
It is kind of like an Altoids 10.
And once you open this up,
you will see that you have a
bunch of items inside there.
And now let's go over all these items.
Each kit, depending on,
let's see, come on, the size of the,
let's get this out of here.
All right, so in here I
have five sticks of fatwood.
Each kit's gonna have
between four or five,
maybe six sticks of fatwood.
And with this fatwood,
you could do so many things
to start you a fire with this.
Now you could use your included striker
on your ferro rod,
which we'll get to that in a minute
to scrape down the
scrapings, shavings of this fatwood.
Now these are pretty thick little pieces,
matchstick type stuff.
And if you're watching,
you can even split this down even further
and make it toothpick size
if you want to to start your fire.
This is waterproof.
It will burn.
It is very flammable.
You can make shavings off of it.
And you can also, let's see,
I left my knife over there.
This is the Bobcat by Tony Powers.
He does a very good
job with these knives.
I love this knife.
I have used this knife so much.
I haven't had a
chance to make him a video.
I apologize about that, Tony.
But you could take this knife
and it has a very sharp 90 degree spine.
And what we're gonna do is
we're going to take this knife
and in one of these corners,
you're just gonna come down
and you're gonna make some shavings.
Now, if you're watching the video,
you'll see that the shavings
are starting to pile up on the bottom.
And you get all these fine little
shavings of this fatwood.
You collect all these shavings,
you continue doing it
as long as you need it
to collect as much as you want.
And the more you got,
the better off you will,
the more successful you're gonna get
(scraping)
And there you go.
We got some shavings there.
And now I want to show and demonstrate.
Now you take the fatwood
and you put your knife on the top of it
and then you could
baton it down even smaller.
You don't have to have a stick.
You just barely use your hand.
You can cut that dude down
and you just made
almost finger, fingertip.
You can almost made a
toothpick size sticks,
literally toothpick size sticks.
But these catch fire easily.
They burn for a pretty good while.
Now you move right along to
the next item inside this kit.
Got our knife over there.
The next item that we're
gonna talk about is the ferro rod.
Now I will get a lot
of comments about this
where people will be like,
Hey man, you gotta
dress the ends of this.
No, I didn't burn the ends of these
whenever I made these loops or knots.
I wanted it to fray.
And the reason why is
that in the event of,
you can still use this
string on this lanyard
of this ferro rod and
striker as fire tender.
You can use it to actually twist it apart
and you can make you about,
I don't know, three different strands
of one and a half foot long fire tender.
By the time you take the knots out of it,
it's gonna be about a foot
or so or a little bit longer.
And, but you can make
that into some fire tender
to start you a fire.
These strikers have a
little sharp edge on one side
and you are able to throw sparks.
Now it's even better with a kniffy,
with a knife, you can
throw some very hefty sparks
with your knife.
And I'm sorry if you're
getting all kinds of feedback
from the microphone right now.
Let's see.
Yeah, you're probably
getting all kinds of squeaky
and stuff like that.
But anyway, it is what it is.
Sorry guys.
But anyway, the ferro rod
is a 5.16, I believe it is,
5.16 by three inch ferro rod.
It's a hefty duty ferro rod.
It's big enough.
You're gonna get thousands of strikes.
You can start thousands
of fires with this thing.
The striker itself, it has
a little ledge over here.
I've never used that in.
I've watched videos where
they've done it incorrectly
and they will use this
end of it that has teeth.
And if you ever watched some of these
Chinese survivalists
or whatever, they got a
person that's never been outdoors
trying to start a fire and
use this thing incorrectly.
You can get a spark, but
you're not going to get it
like you would if you used
the sharp edge of your striker.
It does have a number eight
or whatever hex nut remover.
And then it's got a
bottle opener on that.
And then it'll tell you
what three centimeters is
or five centimeters.
Next up in this kit is some char cloth.
Now, if you follow me on TikTok,
we stayed up several nights in a row
making char cloth for these kits.
These are denim jeans or
some kind of cotton material.
And some of them are
gonna be denim jeans.
Some of them is gonna
be a cotton bed sheet
that I took and cut up and put in here.
And char cloth is
great at starting a fire.
Char cloth is going to allow
you to throw a spark into it.
And then, as you can see on the video,
I just are here in the podcast,
I actually just threw a
spark into this char cloth.
And if you're watching the video,
you can see how red it is.
That is, you put that in with some grass,
some dry, some kind of tender,
and you will have yourself a fire.
And all it took was one
spark to hit that char cloth
and now you have an ember.
And so that will light you a fire.
And in non-wet
conditions, a char cloth is great.
For wet conditions, char cloth is not
gonna start your fire.
And if you get the char cloth wet,
it's gonna be rendered useless.
All right, next up
inside here, inside this kit,
I have fire plugs that I've
made out of natural jute twine.
And each one's getting five or six
or something like that in there.
And these things are awesome.
And they're infused with a,
I'm not even gonna say
what they're infused with,
and then cover with wax.
So if it's got a smell to it, you'll
probably find it out.
But anyway, these things are just like
any other fire plug.
You just twist and
you just wrap it around
and you work it out until
all the fibers are exposed,
like so.
And you can twist it down even more
and just make it a big fluffy ordeal.
Now once you get all your
fibers exposed, like so,
it's gonna look like a
big fluff ball right there.
You could just go ahead
and throw a spark into it
and it does not take much.
There you go.
It's hard for this angle to...
There you go.
You got yourself a nice little fire
and that will burn for a very long time.
It is waxed and so it will
actually act as a candle.
It will burn for a pretty good while.
I ought to do a video on how long,
testing out how long they light.
Now the fire plugs, I've
done the fire plugs as well
and I'm selling these for pretty cheap on
the website as well.
If you're interested,
you get a whole bunch,
you get 20 of these dudes in there.
There are various
lengths, they're different.
Some of them is gonna be
six to eight inches long.
Some of them is gonna be
about three inches long
but you're gonna get 20 of them in there
and you're gonna have
all kinds of opportunities
to start a fire and it is
waterproof, it is waterproof.
Now next item in this fire kit,
blow it back into flames.
I didn't know you can do that.
(fire crackling)
Blow it back into
flames again, that's crazy.
That's a pretty good
fire starter right there.
All right, the next item in this fire kit
is going to be a Fresno lens.
Now, it's a little bit
too late in the evening
for me to be starting
fires with a solar right here
but it's gonna give you the opportunity
to either look at or read something
or you can use it to
do a magnification fire.
Now, a magnification lens
paired with a char cloth
is amazing, it just
takes a couple seconds,
you'll see it, it'll turn red,
you'll have yourself a little ember there
and then you can just
go ahead and throw it
into a tinder bottle, blow it into flames
and you got yourself a fire
even if you lost your ferro rod
or something to that effect.
Now, the purpose of it
all being inside of a tin
is that now you can close this lid
and you don't have to poke a
hole in the top of this thing,
it is loose enough to
where there's gonna be smoke
coming out but you can take cotton,
you can take natural fibers,
punk wood, natural materials,
stuff like that and put it in this tin
and throw it into the
fire and remake char cloth.
Char cloth is going to be
able to help you start a fire
every time and so
when I was thinking about
putting these kits together,
I was trying to find
something that was viable,
something that was
reasonable and cost effective to make
and so here we are and we got char cloth,
just be careful the char cloth is,
it is real char cloth, it's
gonna turn everything black
in there the more you slide it around.
So we got these fire kits right here
and you can check them out on
primitive-camping.com
at the store and everything in this kit
is designed to make a fire.
It's designed for you to be
successful at starting a fire
and these are perfect for
heading out into the woods,
perfect for throwing a tackle box,
throwing it into your
pocket, your fanny pack
or whatever when you go out into hunting,
great outdoors, something like that.
These little kits right here
make great Christmas presents
and anything like that,
I've done it for several years.
People are sick and
tired of getting fire kits
for Christmas for me.
(laughs)
But anyway, that's it.
I just wanted to go over the fire kit,
show you what the fire kit does
and you can use this
thing to start you a fire
and you can depend on it
because it is effective
and it will start you a fire.
Hey, I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did like, follow and share.
Share it with somebody
that may be interested in it.
Follow along on the website,
perimeter-camping.com
and I'll see you there.
Remember, in all your
ways, acknowledge him
and I'll see you next
time in the next video
or the next podcast.
God bless you.
(upbeat music)