Here’s a great addition to your Everyday Carry kit. The Emergency Fire Starter Kit from Zippo has everything you need to start a fire – a reliable Zippo lighter and waxed tinder sticks. The Zippo lighter is made of metal – naturally – and is a matte Safety Orange to make it easily visible in your kit. The lighter uses a replaceable flints and a wheel to ignite the tinder sticks. The lighter seals with an O-ring to keep water out so it’s always ready when you need it. It’s great for camping or for emergency situations. It’s $19.95 at Zippo. Zippo even sells additional tinder sticks when you need them. (Corrected to remove reference to lighter fluid.)
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For an emergency fire starter, you can get smaller, lighter, and cheaper fire starters than that Zippo kit.
But wouldn’t the lighter fluid evaporate if you left this in your emergency kit for more than a couple of months? I don’t think that I would like to rely on it, although maybe if you kept a tin of fluid with it as well it would be OK!
Why would someone have this in their “Everyday Carry kit”? Honestly, I can’t say that a lighter AND tinder combination are an everyday need for…well, pretty much anyone. If you spend so much time in the outdoors that you would need firestarting gear every day, this is probably not the solution. And for intermittent use, like camping, you’re better off with just a regular lighter and some fatwood, firesticks, etc. Fluid-based lighters dry out when they’re left to sit, and the lighter is the really important part here.
I’d probably suggest either just a magnesium firestarter instead (no lighter fluid to evaporate), or matches… or even the Exotac Nanostriker that Dave Rees reviewed last year.
http://the-gadgeteer.com/2010/03/15/exotac-nanostriker-and-matchcap-firestarter-review/
Granted, the Zippo lighter’s probably easier for most people to use… but so are matches. 😀
Anybody who uses a Zippo knows they have to be refueled fairly often, even if they aren’t used. They aren’t the ideal solution for emergency kits…
This product does not use lighter fluid. If you go onto Zippo’s website, you’ll see that the zippo fire starter uses the sparking tool to ignite the tinder tabs (stored in the body). And yes, you wouldnt want to depend on a zippo as your only emergency fire starter.
Good one auxetic. Seems like nobody (including Janet) actually read the product description. I also agree with Rob that this is an emergency kit or camping item, not an everyday carry item.
What’s wrong with a box of matches? 🙂
@auxetic I thought the flint striker was faced the wrong way!
Zippo does make a fine product 🙂
This seems to be a nice looking, well-made product that is nearly worthless to most people.
For everyday carry, a mini-‘Bic’-type lighter or a ‘split pea’ lighter would be smaller and lighter if you were not a smoker or someone who needed something more.
For camping, there are many options that work as well or better.
For a survival kit, I prefer 3 independent fire starters- some combination of a ‘Bic’-type lighter, waterproof matches, a small sparker and waxy tinder (like that in this unit- but smaller and cheaper), and a flint rod (the small. cheap Boy Scout version). In a pinch, the flint rod is my favorite single method.
It doesn’t use Lighter Fluid . The spark from the wheel ignites the tinder sticks.