I mostly want to get this link saved so I can refer back to it, but there’s no reason not to share it.
Maybe I’m the only one who would find this interesting, but… in most places where I’ve lived (which is a lot of places) quartz has been pretty common, usually “milk” or “rose” quartz There are good-sized chunks of milk quartz in my yard as I write this (there is a move pending, so that may not be true for long), which is natural since there was once a gold mine a little over a mile away. I don’t think I’ve ever found flint occurring naturally anywhere that I’ve been (it does show up as “ballast” stones used for a bed under railroad tracks, but who knows where it came from). There is a town called “Flint” maybe an hour away on back roads which might be a good place to look, but I doubt that just wandering around randomly looking for the stuff in a small town would be appreciated.
I’ve tried making sparks with quartz and a normal firesteel (please, we’re talking steel here, not a ferrocerium rod). It’s possible, you get a few small sparks if you try long enough, but it’s hard to get a good edge on quartz and they wear down quickly. To be honest, broken bottle-glass works easier… and is not bad. Of course, these days there are fewer and fewer glass bottles…
This opens up whole new possibilities for using quartz, though. Using a hardened steel spike in this way leverages the whole weight/momentum of a much larger stone to apply force to a tiny area of steel, and doesn’t rely on creating and maintaining an edge on the quartz. Looks like a much more effective technique.
My first thought is that this might work well with a masonry nail, fitted into some sort of handle/haft. Masonry nails are cut nails, not drawn wire with upset (forged) heads, are they have to be very hard to be driven into brick, concrete or cinderblock (as I recall, they’re impossible to hacksaw),so they must have a tool-like carbon content, but they have to be shock resistant as well, they can’t be brittle. I’ve never had much use for them, I actually saw an incident once where some maintenance men driving them into an apartment building basement wall just to hang a sign cracked the concrete foundation of the building, forcing temporary evacuation of the building for weeks, and I was told it cost over a million dollars in repair and reinforcement. An expensive sign hanging- not a lesson you’d forget.
It should be easy enough to test the masonry nail idea. If it works, a masonry nail or two would be a lightweight way to extend the utility of a fire kit/tinderbox to include a good way to use “found” quartz, which could be very valuable in some circumstances.
I’ll update this if and when I learn more.
– Robert the Wombat