This will seem heretical to many, I'm sure, but I long ago came to the conclusion that matches were a pretty poor option for firestarting in the contexts of camping or wilderness survival.
You only get one light from a match. If it's a damp match you get no light and tend to crumble the match head which then has only limited potential for firelighting. And when you have used your matches, you have to resort to other methods of firelighting of varying degrees of difficulty. Why this love affair with matches, then? I used to do the waterproofing thing: coating rows of Swan vestas stuck in Plasticine with nail varnish, etc. and devising ducky little waterproof 'match safes' (with strikers) to keep them in. What a waste of time!
How many matches would one have to carry to equal the fire-lighting potential in a single butane gas lighter? Hundreds, probably. I've usually got a couple of my favoured Clipper brand butane lighters on my person when I'm out and about. I buy them at the local market for £1.00 for two. These are refillable and come in a range of exciting colours (including bushcraft orange). Moreover, the flint/wheel striker mechanisms of this brand can be removed, either to replace the flint, or for use as a stand-alone tinder striker (if, perhaps, the lighter's fuel had run out or leaked away through damage).
Firesteels are great as reliable firestarting back-up. I've probably got half-a-dozen stashed in various bum bags, rucksacks and jacket pockets. Nevertheless, cheap butane lighters have got to be the most economical, reliable and generally useful means of lighting a fire.
Matches? You can keep 'em.
Burnt Ash
You only get one light from a match. If it's a damp match you get no light and tend to crumble the match head which then has only limited potential for firelighting. And when you have used your matches, you have to resort to other methods of firelighting of varying degrees of difficulty. Why this love affair with matches, then? I used to do the waterproofing thing: coating rows of Swan vestas stuck in Plasticine with nail varnish, etc. and devising ducky little waterproof 'match safes' (with strikers) to keep them in. What a waste of time!
How many matches would one have to carry to equal the fire-lighting potential in a single butane gas lighter? Hundreds, probably. I've usually got a couple of my favoured Clipper brand butane lighters on my person when I'm out and about. I buy them at the local market for £1.00 for two. These are refillable and come in a range of exciting colours (including bushcraft orange). Moreover, the flint/wheel striker mechanisms of this brand can be removed, either to replace the flint, or for use as a stand-alone tinder striker (if, perhaps, the lighter's fuel had run out or leaked away through damage).
Firesteels are great as reliable firestarting back-up. I've probably got half-a-dozen stashed in various bum bags, rucksacks and jacket pockets. Nevertheless, cheap butane lighters have got to be the most economical, reliable and generally useful means of lighting a fire.
Matches? You can keep 'em.
Burnt Ash
I've yet to be out on a day when that would blow out because of the wind. I've been out fishing in a Force 11 on the South coast in driving rain and hail and still been able to get a cigar going with that little beauty 
