For my take on this topic - to get a fire lit in Blighty's damp conditions is to have options;
Flint & steel works well, ferro rods are great, matches - if you can keep them dry, a lighter if needs be and a magnifying glass for those lucky times.
Also carry a few cotton wool & vaseline balls, some jute twine that can be teased into a fibrous nest, a candle stub and some lipsalve.
Couple all of that with the ability to make feather-sticks, split whatever fuel you can forage and lots of patience.
You don't need to know it all at the outset - just enough to keep half a step ahead of your student!
Have fun with it all.
Indeed as looking in my forgotten fire tin, a rather battered 2 oz tobacco tin I had created over a decade or more ago, I find ; lifeboat matches, strike anywhere matches, a tiny BIC lighter, a pencil sharpener, fresnel lens, a couple of small ferro rods and saw file strikers, a steel striker and a dodgy bag containing vaseline soaked cotton wool balls, to conclude I have options. But I do wish to move to a more pocket slip-able waterproof and bash resistant plastic box as I certainly can't envisage needing a 2 oz pan, - not anymore anyway as I have moved past that stuff.
So my plan with my pupil is as follows - starting with ferro rods ; start a fire in ideal conditions, then start a fire in the worst conditions (raining), start a fire at night and one for winter ; start a fire when one is cold.
When my pupil is confident with ferro rod fire starting, move onto flint and steel and do the same, to also instruct my pupil to create a tinder box and there learn what in the wild can be useful for tinder.
After which I intend to more for interest to stir the grey matter as opposed to 'useful' move onto what I consider the more exotic methods ; friction, compression, electricity, light concentration (though I personally have never been successful at fire making with a magnifying glass or polished parabolic surface), etc.
Noting in all this is not just the teaching of my pupil, but the practising for myself, as I have said, I have been a long time away to have been delighted with reading what all of you have wrote of which has unlocked mind stuff I had thought I'd forgot, well I had to have been asking the question I had , later realising of course all I needed was keys to open doors.
Thank You All.
