I have a firestarter disk, but it won’t light. How do I use it?
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I acquired a bunch of camping gear from a friend who moved out of the country. There was one of these hockey puck shaped disks, half grey half black, remaining in the cooking gear, but I have not a clue how to use it, and the friend is out of contact for a few months. I tried holding a lighter to it, expecting it to be some kind of cooking charcoal pellet, but it didn’t catch on fire. How do I use it? Or is it for something else entirely? I googled and googled and can’t figure out what it is used for.
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[Edit]I believe Pharap's comment is correct. Also, magnesium would not be used for the striker. There are some firestarter kits that supply a magnesium compound to be used as fuel.
[original reply] The piece you are missing is usually called a striker. It would be a stick or rod, often of magnesium. You (ahem) strike the striker on the stone to make sparks.
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There are two possibilities.
As Olin Lathrop states it's a grindstone, and would be used to sharpen, or "file" things. It that's the case, then you would not use it to start a fire.
It's part of a fire starting kit. I say a part, because fire starting kits usually have something like flint, that you would strike against something like a steel part. Flint can come in many colors but it's usually black or brown, and not gray. Also, the shape is generally not that uniform, and it's usually nowhere near that big.
If your 100% sure that it's a fire starting device, then it's probably flint. Though I would sooner think it's a grindstone, or even just a weight to keep the paper napkins in place.
A bit of bonus advice. Never try to light something on fire if you don't know for sure what it is.
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It looks like a grindstone. The two halves would be different fineness. Your friend probably had this in his cooking kit to sharpen knives.
This doesn't look like it has anything to do with starting fires.
Here is a device that looks very similar to yours. It's clearly for sharpening:
This is a snippet from the web site of Sharpening Supplies.
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It's a sharpening stone. Very nice, but unless you're really good at sharpening knives, etc, by hand you'd be better off with a ceramic rod sharpener, which is sufficiently easy to use that even a complete dodo like myself can put a wicked edge on a knife with it.
I've got an old-old-old Smith's ceramic rod knife and scissor sharpener that works really well. It looks like the more up-to-date version is the model 50185, which you can find many places, including Amazon.
Best of luck.
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