Genuine Issue Magnesium Survival Fire Starter

Works great. You just gently scrape the sides until you have a small pile then strike the flint. My only bit of advice is to make sure you use it in a location out of the wind and on a stable surface.

No Hacksaw blade needed, no broken/dull knives necessary, you only have to be smarter than a chunk of magnesium.

I sent this to my 18 year old brother for his birthday and he loved it!

I've had 3 unsuccessful use of this on 3 different occasion.
1. In an empty house that I was renovating. Spent 10 min trying to scrape the magnesium with an exacto blade and trying to strike a spark with a screw driver. It was so aggravating that I drove 7 min to the store to get a lighter.
2. My sons & their cousins tried to start a spark lit fire for practice in the back yard with this new fangle mag block that they purchased. Result... damaged pocket knife, flint broke, and no fire.
3. I tried this with my sons in our driveway with my camping knife. Result... dulled the knife, the itty-bitty flint dowel shattered, and no fire.

May be if I had used a hack saw blade like others suggested but what's the point of buying a tool if you had to furnish the other half of it? And who wants to carry a hack saw blade with them on their key chain?

With just a scraping tool I get a 700 degree F fire from this, burn a tire to put up a smoke signal in the rain!!! This is the hottest fire on earth, sweet, I can start wet tinder, I think with carbon this thing melts metal....
cool tool gang!!!

This is the best fire starter you can buy. As one of the other reviewers indicated it is better to use a hacksaw blade than ruin your knife. Even better is a reciprocating saw blade. It's stouter and seems to work better. Overall the product is fantastic.