Fire & knife

 
  Practiced a few things today.  While I was updating my EDC into a small " Costco" hydration pack, ( Pictures to follow later) I grabbed my new "Light my fire" fire steel and practiced using it to ignite some cotton tinder.  Now, I though that by using some normal lamp oil, I would be able to get some cotton with a little lamp oil in it to light.  Couldn't get it ignite!  I was surprised!  Ok, so I then tried just dry cotton, about a quarter size pinch and then used the fire steel to rain sparks into the fibers.  Almost immediately the dry cotton ignited with a good spark! That was an interesting find! While I was there in the sun, I decided to try the magnifying lens thats contained in the 4 function whistle I have in my kit.  The lens creates a focused spot about 1 mm small.  I was able to burn holes in an oak leaf, but wasn't able to burn even get smoke from a small pinch of the cotton tinder!
  I adjusted the focused spot up & down within the cotton fibers but git no smoke at all.  I guess the "Spot" is just a little too small to use for igniting fires, so, the magnifying lens will just be a "Sliver chaser" now.
  As for the 1oz steel flask with the lamp oil, I'll keep it in the kit, and just use it on kindling, to help spread the flamed when lit.
   Also, I've been reading up on reprofiling knife blades and decided to practice on my Tanto knife.  Now, reprofiling is redoing the blades edge, repairing damaged blades, ( Removing dents, gouges etc..)
  I've seen a few videos on procedures to do this.  Grabbed a cheap stone kit containing 2 stones a corse and fine.  After about 2hours of grinding on the blade, I got the blade profiled, the factory edge is gone! An hour ( Maybe little longer) on the fine stone, and the blade started to get polished!  After honing out the blades burr, I stropped it on an old belt a few times, then checked it's edge with a sheet of paper.  It sliced through the paper extremely cleanly!  This blade has NEVER been this sharp!  I still have some polishing to do on it, (It taint pretty yet) I'm planning to continue the "Polishing" with fine grit sand paper or emery cloth maybe 400-600 grit or higher (1000 grit?) need to see what recommendation come from another forum)
  It's so sharp now, and I'm so impressed by it, I added the knife to my new EDC pack! Pictures to follow.
  Today was very informative day for me!
 Got 3 more knifes I need to work on now!
  Update:
  Below are shots of a before and after my re profiling of my Tanto knife
 I still have a lot of "Fine" honing to do, but this knife blade is the sharpest one I have now.  I can't wait to hit up my other blades now!

 
  The knife work above, the factory edge was convex, I changed it to scandi.  My fathers hunting knife, an "Original Trapper" from Solingen Germany has a scandi edge, and it's really sharp, so I made my cheap tanto into a scandi edge and it's really sharp now also.
Haven't done any more work to the tanto as travel for work and the winter put its priority way down the list.

Why lamp oil? Something wrong with Petroleum jelly? Or have you never tried it?

I'm guessing the lamp oil saturated the cotton way too much…PJ cotton balls you can still pull apart and get dry cotton to ignite easily.

And the magnifying glass…just guessing by imagining the structure of cotton fibers instead of hitting a big flat surface it would hit individual strands and blocked out below it. Kind of like a light sponge.

 

  Haven't tried PJ yet I do know it'll ignite,  I wanted to try lamp oil, but apparently a spark won't or can't ignite it, and yes my cotton ball was wet with the lamp oil.  I now use the lamp oil to help spread a flame over the tinder once I have a flame going. Lamp oil works wonders for doing that! The magnifying lens, I'm talking about while in direct sun will focus to a very tiny spot, maybe less that a mm across.  While this will burn the bejesus out of a finger, and burn holes into dry leafs, the focused spot I think is far too tiny to produce an ember easily.  A lens with a larger surface area will produce a larger focused spot allowing for more heat to transfer.

I keep 6 vacuum sealed in my wallet. About the same size as a credit card. Light rain or shine.

I use cotton balls lightly smeared with PJ, keep them in a tin or plastic zip lock, starts and burns with a match for about one minute by itself.

Try some dryer lint! 

Have a picture of the stone's/sharpening kit?

I keep 6 vacuum sealed in my wallet. About the same size as a credit card. Light rain or shine.

I just swapped over to putting two cotton balls in a drinking straw and then melting the ends. Nice part is you have the straw to use a blower to help "fan" the ember/flames
 
Kinda like this

Try some dryer lint! 

Darn A-Hull House Party