Pioneer Preps: Improve Your Magnesium Bar

Since 1973, magnesium bar fire starters have been around. A simple, waterproof, arguably unbreakable, fire starter that can get hot enough to light wet tinder. The bar can produce many shavings to make quite a few fires. Here though, is possibly the only downfall to the magnesium bar: making the shavings. It takes awhile and one has to be very careful not to allow all the shavings they have scraped off to scatter to the wind. Can it be done? Of course, I myself have done this many times on my bug out adventures, but it did get me thinking on how one could improve upon the design. Hence I bring you the Improved Magnesium Bar.

By Grimm, contributing author to SHTFblog

With a little modification one can give their magnesium bar and themselves an edge in a dire emergency. If fire is needed as soon as possible the magnesium bar suffers. No matter what, one will have to do the proper preparations to have the materials to build a fire from a small flame, but in the case of the magnesium bar you also have to take extra time to scrape the shavings. Now what if I told you that you already had a good amount of shavings ready to go with your bar? Then you would simply set up your fire, pour out the shavings and spark them to life. This is what the improved magnesium bar does. As you will see in my video I show you step by step how you can use a few simple tools to modify your magnesium bar.

The benefits of this modification are not just limited to the shavings. Having the ranger band on the bar provides a better grip on the bar. After the shavings chamber is empty the band could be used for a multitude of things. Once your fire is roaring you could even sit and shave new shavings to be stored away in the chamber and resealed with the band. Perhaps you found some new tinder and it could be stored in the chamber. Of course the ranger band doesn’t keep it fully waterproof but it is better than a pocket. Even though I have showed you one way of improving your magnesium bar I encourage you to experiment. I only drilled one chamber, but that doesn’t mean you cant have more. Having a magnesium bar is a good start to ensuring your ability to make fire but why not do a little preparation and make it an Improved Magnesium Bar?