Why a Multitool Has a Fire Starter (and When It Matters)

It is an hour before dark and the rain has settled in. The wood you stacked is wet on top. The lighter was in the pocket that filled with water, and the matches are back in the car.

What you have is the multitool on your belt: a dozen implements, and by now you know what each of them is for. On the side of the handle there is also a small grey rod.

Why is there a fire starter on a multitool?

Because fire is the one thing on that handle that nothing else on it can produce.

Look at the other implements. A blade cuts. Pliers grip and turn. A saw separates material. A driver turns a screw. If you lose one of them, another can usually cover the job badly — a blade will eventually get through the branch a saw would have taken in ten seconds.

Fire has no such backup. No implement on a multitool produces heat or light, and no combination of the ones that are there will light a fire. You can cut the cord, open the can and tighten the screw, and still be sitting in the dark with wet wood in front of you.

So it is carried as its own part. That is the reason for the rod.

What does a fire starter actually do?

It makes a spark. You scrape a hardened rod with a sharp edge, and the material that comes off it is hot enough to catch. The rod is not fuel — it is the ignition. Whatever tinder you brought is the fuel.

That distinction explains the two things people get wrong about rods. The first is that they run out: there is no fuel to burn down, no seal to fail and no battery to go dead, so a rod that has sat in a pack for years still works the first time you ask it to. The second is that a rod replaces knowing how to build a fire: it doesn't. A rod gives you a spark, and turning that spark into a fire is the same job it has always been — small dry material first, then bigger, then bigger.

What is wrong with just carrying a lighter?

Nothing, on a good day. A lighter is smaller, faster and easier, and for lighting a stove at a campsite it is the better tool.

The question is what happens on a bad day, and every lighter has the same two dependencies: fuel, and a mechanism. A disposable holds a limited amount of fuel and will not tell you how much is left. A refillable depends on a seal. A piezo ignition is a small mechanism that can be flooded, fouled or broken. Matches trade the mechanism for a consumable that absorbs moisture.

The three conditions that make a fire matter most — wet, cold, and a long time in a pack without being checked — are the same three that a lighter handles worst. That is the case for carrying a rod as well as a lighter, not instead of one.

Does it work when everything is wet?

The spark does not care about water. The tinder does.

That is where most wet-weather failures actually happen: the spark lands on something that will not catch. The preparation is the same as it has always been. Keep a small amount of dry tinder somewhere water cannot reach it — a pocket, a sealed bag, the inside of a sheath. Find the dry side of dead wood; the inside of a wet branch is dry. Then scrape the rod with its tip buried in the tinder rather than held above it.

A rod, or an electric arc?

Both work. They fail in different ways.

A rod has no consumable and no charge, so it can sit for years and still work the first time you need it. An electric arc does the same job with a high-voltage spark instead of a scraping action: it is windproof, it does not care about altitude or weather, and it will light again and again without any technique at all.

What it needs is a charge. That is the one dependency a rod does not have, and the one to weigh if the tool is going to live in a bag for a long time without being looked at.

Does it matter if the rod comes off?

Two things change when it does, and they are worth knowing before you buy.

The first is that it can leave without the tool. If the multitool is in a checked bag, lent to someone or simply lost, the rod can be in your pocket — losing the tool does not mean losing your ability to make fire.

The second is that a component you can remove is a component you can deal with on its own. We have had shipments held over the fire-starting component and the whistle rather than over the tool. When the thing a rule objects to is a part that unscrews, you can take it out, ship it separately or leave it behind, and the tool itself is unaffected.

That is the thinking behind the detachable magnesium rod on our MT-75. A rod that cannot be removed is still a perfectly good rod; it just cannot do either of those two things.

How do you choose between them?

Pick by the failure you are least willing to accept, not by feature count.

• If the tool will sit unused for years and then have to work once — take a rod. No fuel, no charge, no mechanism to seize.
• If you light fires often and can keep it charged — the arc is quicker, and wind, altitude and weather make no difference to it.
• If you do not want your fire source to disappear with the tool — take one whose rod comes off.
• If you want the rod protected from the rest of your pack — take one that stores it inside the handle.

Whichever you pick, use it once in daylight with dry tinder before you need it in the rain. That is the difference between carrying a way to make fire and hoping you have one.

The same question — what is this tool actually for — came up with a window breaker and emergency shears.