This post is to ALL. I don't know how to reply to ALL.
I read this whole thread useless trash as it is, it sure is funny :haha:
One point, in quenching you only need the face of the striker that hot, so you could hold the steel with tongs and just quench the face and sides a bit for that glass hard effect we need, and leave the rest of the "C" not heated as much and certainly not quenched.
........
Either hand can hold either the flint or the striker. It depends on what you want to do.
If you want to stand up and are right handed, hold the flint and tinder with char in your left hand and strike down grazzing the flint with the steel in your right hand.
The char should be on top of the flint in this case, since scraping off the sparks with have them on top of the flint.
If you want to sit over a nest on the ground, or be kneeling then you can place the flint in your right hand, the steel in your left, and the nest on the ground with the char in it.
Then this way you hold the steel still over the nest and strike down with the flint grazing the steel.
Up heya' in New Hampsta the ground is wet so I tend to stand.
As it happens I have a beard, it gets so cold here in winta' even our women grow a beard.
As it also happens I don't like smoke in my eyes as it appears to strangers that I am in the act of crying, and I never cry, not ever, not even when i cut myself trying to start fire with a flint and steel. See? never!
But I still remember playing wind mill in Kindergarten, so I don't blow into a glowing nest, I wind mill it, and don't git me no smoke in my eyes.
Ah just now I see 'review other posts' next time I will be naming names! :blah: