“Slide Strike” Method of Flint and Steel with a Silky Saw

Slide-striking flint and steel. This isn’t necessarily a better method; just a different one. Ordinarily when striking sparks off of carbon steel; either the steel or the stone is swung with force and the two glance off of each other creating the sparks. However, if your stone is sharp enough and you have a long striking surface; you can accomplish the same thing by quickly sliding the stone down the steel; much like you would with a ferro rod.

The biggest advantage I can see here is that the sliding motion is much less damaging to the tool that conventional strikes. Lots of my knives and saws have small nicks and dents in them from errant strikes; and sliding a stone down the edge essentially eliminates this. I made a lot of these slide-strikes in the process of shooting this video, and it actually smoothed out the previous chips that I had put in the spine with conventional striking.

It also creates less of the violent vibrations that can break up delicate natural char like punkwood; as there is no concussive force. It is also a relatively control motion which could save you from nicking your fingers along with the edge; but you could still slip and potential get cut by the steel.

The definitely works best with a long steel surface like you see on this Silky big boy. I was able to make this work with both a dedicated striker and a couple of my knives as well; but without the long strip of steel it is quite a bit more difficult; which probably negates the benefits.

I found it easiest to get a good stroke by holding the char up against the edge, as I didn’t have to worry about stopping short to avoid busting my knuckles.

I used a piece of quartz for this video; but the sharper the stone, the better. Off camera I scraped the spine with shards of flint and obsidian and they worked even better than the quartz; so this might be even more viable for you if you have sharp flaky rocks like flint or chert in your region.