2PCS Magnesium Fire Starter with Striker, High Temp Magnesium Rod, Ferro Rod Fire Starter Survival Tool with 20Pack Waterproof Tinder and Steel Fire Striker for Camping, Hiking and Emergency

This ad copy suffers terribly in translation to English, and by what I can only call a complete misunderstanding of actual product use by the Marketing Department. These are not Magnesium rods from which small shavings are scraped into small piles that will burn with extreme intensity when subjected to a source of open flames. These are ferrocerium rods – a mischmetal alloy that when scraped by a harder metal (ideally, high carbon steel), exposes tiny fragments of the metal to oxygen that then causes the fragments to burst into high temperature sparks. When you direct the resulting stream of “flaming sparks” onto a tinder source, you create the open flames needed to help you build a larger fire. In this kit, ordinary cotton balls (no special treatment applied) are included in zip top baggies that can be fluffed out into small fibers as your tinder source. While the rods themselves are waterproof, the cotton balls are not – they won’t work when soaked in water. In this kit, you’d be well advised to coat the cotton balls in petroleum jelly and keep them in the zip top bags, so that they could be unraveled for use as tinder in wet conditions.The black coating on the rods that has to be removed before use is a protective paint layer that keeps the ferro rod from literally “rusting/corroding away” when its high iron content is exposed to open air. While the ideal would be to have very long and thick ferro rods from which long, sustained strokes with hardened metal strikers would produce large showers of flaming sparks, these smaller rods (5/16” – 8mm diameter x 2 5/8 inches – 65mm of exposed rod length) are big enough to get the job done while still being light and compact for easy pocket carry as part of your Every Day Carry gear bag. While you’ll get many strikes from each of these small rods, the claim of 20,000 is grossly exaggerated (based upon my considerable experience with this same basic type of ferro rod). U.S. Quarter Dollar shown for sizing comparison.I find these to be a very good value at listing price of $6 USD (time of writing), and concede that an argument could be made to elevate rating to 5 Stars (I’ll leave that decision to you as the reader of this review).I hope you found my comments and photo of benefit in your considerations.