Smith's50562 Pack Pal Tinder Maker with Fire Starter – Stainless Steel Grater –Striker – Natural Tinder – Outdoor Survival Tool – Lightweight – Portable, Yellow

Of course the key to fire making is preparation and no "gadget" will ever compensate for poor preperation, that said this works really well. so this is as much a demo as it is a review.Ok, based on experience I started the test by scrapping the black coating from the ferro rod as I did not want to waste time once I had the tinder as the air was very damp and this would quickly infect the tinder making it hard/impossible to light. This is often overlooked in bad weather.First task was to find some dry wood except that this is Oct 1 2019 and as my headline says I live in Cottenham hence it's been peeing down all night. So I am looking for standing dead wood that has been partially sheltered from the rain. I found a tree blown over about 6 months ago that mostly fitted the bill, not entirely ideal as you can see but better than anything I found on the dog walk. I then took away some of the dead bark from the underside and used the scraper to collect some shavings, These failed the lip/cheek test and were tossed.for the next set of shavings I wanted too see what could be collected in 25 strokes and as you can see in pic 3 and 4 you do get quite a bit. I fond a flat spot and began making sparks. It took about 15 strikes to start the fire in pic 5 due to a combination of the atmosphere and the striker which is OK but not great. The tinder burned for around 25 seconds so had I actually been starting a fire I would have been ready with my tinder extender which for me generally involve feather sticks, birch/beech bark or the like. From there the kindling would be added. Of course in today's weather the trick to starting a fire would have been the tinder extended and the kindling/stage 1 wood as this would almost certainly have been damp to some degree. Over all it made the collection easier than scrapping with a knife and I will add this to my kit, I will give the ferro rod and striker to my nephew as I have lots of both.In Conclusion this was a genuinely useful piece of kit and I will make a point of using it over the coming weeks to test the longevity of the teeth and although not a replacement for good planning and fire preparation it is certainly a helpful tool.

Really does work! Tested it by starting the fire on our bbq. As long as you are not too brutal with the grater it is strong enough to do the job.

Kids love using this ( obviously supervised!)Ease of use rather than using a knife to whittle kindling is ideal.

This is great as a beginners tinder maker , tinder storage and fire making kit. Unfortunately, it just isn’t rugged and sturdy enough for regular outdoor use.

Excelent product. Was surprised with its sturdyness and how quickly it was filled by scraping it against a log of drywood. Took the little firesteel off as I use another one, but it’s actually not bad either for its size

Brilliant, bought a second one immediately. Shame it isn't a little more robust but still very very good

it does everthing I wanted it to do and I can get a lot of dry tinder to put in a bag for saving quickly a really good buy

As a positive, the grating system works well. Within a couple of minutes we had ignition, but you would want to choose your wood carefully.The paracord linking the 3 items is a bit short. You can add your own should you so wish, but this would reduce the "value" of this item further. Also, as arguably the most important part of the set is the "grater", it is a shame that this would be the bit that's most easily lost as it's not attached to anything.My main gripe is that the fire-starter stick fell out of the small red grip after a few goes, and kept on doing so. This was so poor I had to use a separate striker/ fire-starter. Simply shoddy. I don't mind paying for the ingenuity of the system but really, the quality is poor. This item should be £3-£4 tops.