A variation of this is to "shape" a piece of clear ice between the palms of your hands until you have that concave lens shape - and then use it to light your tinder.
Another unique way works for blacksmiths. Take a bar of iron/steel around 3/8 inch thick. Then repeatedly hammer the end on your anvil - turning it 90 degrees often. Hit it hard and fast. Each time you hit the bar, you are putting energy into it. This heats it up. If you work hard enough and fast enough, you can get the end of the bar hot enough to be glowing red in under a minute. Then touch that glowing red bar to your tinder to light it. Have good tinder that the ember will spread through without much coaxing. You're going to be pretty "winded" from the hammering, and won't have much breathe to blow on your coals/embers. It's one of those little blacksmith "tricks" to show off with.
Another unusual method I just read about is using Quartzite and soft Iron. "... A method allied to, but distinct from, the Flint-and-Steel Method was that which involved the use of a block of quartzite and a pointed piece of soft iron. These yielded sparks when struck together. The method came into use in comparatively recent times and was never wide-spread, having never been practised outside the Scandinavian countries; where, for a few centuries, it was used very generally." from the book The Bryant and May Museum of Fire-Making Appliances pub. in 1926.
This I have to try. There's some quartz outcroppings over in the limestone cut out by the road, and I seem to have LOTS of soft iron layig about. I guess the hand drill stuff will just have to wait a bit longer.
Mike - yee ol' grumpy German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands
