Review on The Friendly Swede Ferro Rods: The Ultimate Fire Starter Survival Tool For Camping & Hiking! by Robert Cooper

Awesome product! Especially after the experience I just had while visiting family over thanksgiving. One of the nephews is a budding survivalist and just got his first magnesium fire starter. He was quite eager to show it to me and guide him in the proper usage. "Piece of cake", I thought to myself since I had recently introduced my girlfriend to the wonders of magnesium. She shaved of a little pile, and got it going with the first shower of sparks, just as it should be and always has been for me. So, back to the nephew. He hands me his new most coveted knife, sits back, and waits for the fireworks. I start scraping the block and think to myself, "this seems to be a bit harder than I remember", but I just chalked it up to my arthritis flaring up on me. A little while later, my mound is ready. I launch a shower of sparks expecting a conflagration, and, nothing. Ok, try again, and again, and again. Nothing. I hand over the knife to see if younger hands can prevail. Not so much. We write it off for the moment, and decide to try again later. Back at the house later that day, we set out again. This time we have a great pile of tinder and dryer lint under the magnesium mound. A tremendous amount of striking and sparking later, we finally have a fire. I notice, though, that it was the tinder that caught, not the magnesium. "Oh well," I thought, "at least the nephew got his fire." I was a bit personally discouraged thinking that next time I'm in the backwoods, I will likely freeze to death. To the interwebs I go! As it turns out, there are knockoff magnesium fire starters out there that are about as effective as rubbing two wet rolls of toilet paper together. Apparently, that's what we had. After looking around, I came across The Friendly Swede and thought that this looks like a quality product at a reasonable price. The fire starters showed up quickly and I set out to redeem my manliness. First, I used the included scraper to open a frosty beverage (always a good thing to mix with fire), then set about building a monument of magnesium. The curved, toothed part of the scraper made quick work of it. "Softer metal," I thought. This could be a good sign. One scrape, two scrapes, whoosh! My faith had been restored. Thoughts of camping by a roaring fire danced in my head. I thought about ordering a set of these fabulous fire starters to the nephew, but my girlfriend said that maybe letting him struggle to be the bane of Smokey The Bear might not be such a bad thing.