Maybe. Dan and I were at a, ahem, local watering hole in December for his birthday. At the rooftop bar overlooking Baltimore (literally the highest spot in Charm City) on a snowy night, Dan wondering if the magnesium of a KUM wedge was soft enough to cut. Yes, it is, he found. But we dared not light a fire on the newly polished wood on which our dripping Buds rested at the bar. We drank coffee in the snow and forgot about it.
Last week, Dan shaved one down, lit it, and the flame bore straight through the work table. In addition to giving a pencil fine points, a magnesium sharpener, it seems, can work as a fire starter. What’s more: if you have no knife but do (for whatever reason) have a screwdriver, you can shave the magnesium with the sharpener’s own blade, in a bizarre act of pencil-gear-self-destruction.
We need to do a more thorough How-To about pencil sharpener fire starting, and soon. Maybe our first video?
Needless to say, don’t try this at home. Dan and are both old Eagle Scouts with fire experience and, hell, he’s a professional fireman!
I’m entirely too fascinated with this idea.
Please do the video!
Second that! I might have never made it past “Cub”, but never lost the fascination with fire. Plus I’m sure still have several Magnesium wedges with blunt blades that would be suitable for experimentation ;)
We sell a lot of these at work to school science departments, to burn in experiments.
It figures that a professional fireman would light a pencil sharpener to see if it would burn.
I knew there was a good reason I read your blog! I find this absolutely amazing – I immediately pulled out my own kum sharpener and sure enough it says magnesium on the side. I’m not an Eagle scout but I might try this later today I’ll let you know how it goes ;)
Oh, if I had known sooner. Just got coerced by my son to buy him a Light-my-Fire firestick. Little did I imagine that his sharpener would do the trick. Looking forward to the video.
Dan thinks that the magnesium content might be too small to light with a spark, but we’ll find out soon. : )
Trying to figure out what pencil accessory could be used as a flint. That’s the only other thing that would be needed. Plus pencil shavings for tinder, of course.
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