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

I purchased these for our packout kits (bugouts packs in packout toolboxes), and thought I had made a good choice; however, the short version is "don't coat magnesium with paint. it ruins the whole block."The long version is: As an eagle scout (with all three palms) I was blessed to have been taught a great deal about survival and emergency skills. It also helped to grow up in rural Utah, where I have been able to put many of those skills to the test. I generally camp a couple dozen times per year, and try to learn more (and use more) skills each year.Now that I'm a father, I want to make sure that my four children have the same knowledge, and enjoy the same experiences. We still go camping often, and more recently have been rebuilding our survival kits. I make it a standing rule, that you must know how to use the items in your kit - or they won't be helpful. Each camping trip we learn about another item in the packouts.Most items we have in them work really well; however, when we came to test our magnesium blocks last fall - they wouldn't start. The striker works well, but the magnesium won't light. After spending a ridiculous amount of time scraping off all of the paint, I was finally able to get enough "pure" metal into a pile to start the fire. It probably took a good 45-50 minutes of "just scraping" to clear enough of the paint off, to get a "clean" pile of magnesium. Sparks without the Mag are useless, and end up just being "for show."In a real emergency, this would have burnt way too many calories, and taken much too long to have been useful. This is a great example of taking something simple, and making it overly compilated. In this case, now it doesn't work.It's akin to using square tires on a car - because "they look better." These blocks are about that useless.