Questions and Answers : Fire Pistons

Question : 

"Luke,

I know that you use the ferro rods a lot while out on your camp outs. Not sure if you've seen the fire pistons or not, but they are pretty cool. You can google them and find all kinds of variations. Just thought that you might be interested if you've never seen them in action before."

Answer :

"Hey there ***,

how are you doing my friend?  

As for fire pistons, I've messed with them before and I'm not all that fond of them.  I personally wouldn't recommend them to anyone if they were planning on relying on them. Fire pistons are very susceptible to dirt which gets onto the sealing surfaces and prevents sufficient compression to generate an ember. Most need to be cleaned thoroughly before each use if you want to get anything better than a 10% success rate.  Won't work when wet either.  

Thanks for the suggestion my friend."