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    Taking Inventory: Flint and Steel

    Just the thing for starting fires

    Fire is something you normally want to avoid in Minecraft. It’s hot, it hurts, and it spreads alarmingly rapidly through wooden structures and forests. But sometimes there are situations when you need it – like when lighting a campfire, or the candles on a cake. It’s those very times when you’ll be glad you crafted our item of the month – the flint and steel.

    Flint and steel is old in Minecraft terms – it was released in January 2010, in the same patch that added pickaxes, axes and bows. Originally they were the main tool used to smelt ores and cook food, but about a month later furnaces were added to the game instead, and flint and steel’s role was demoted to just setting things on fire.

    A screenshot of the Minecraft UI, depicting the recipe for flint & steel.

    Getting yourself a flint and steel is easy. Get some flint and some steel iron, and pop them in a crafting grid together. Because the recipe only has two ingredients, you won’t need a 3x3 crafting bench – you can just use the crafting grid in your inventory.

    Got one? Great! Hold it in your hand and hit the use button on another block nearby – preferably not a wooden block that forms part of your house, because it’ll catch fire. If there’s another block that’s flammable nearby then the fire will spread and... well... let’s just say that’s why we no longer have the Great Library of Alexandria.

    Flint and steel can be used to light campfires, candles, and cakes with candles. It can also light nether portals (so bring a flint and steel to the Nether in case your portal gets extinguished for some reason), and will ignite TNT. 

    As you use it, its durability will decrease – but like any tool it can be refreshed by combining it in a crafting grid with another damaged tool. If you really want your flint and steel to last, it can be enchanted with Unbreaking or Mending.

    An old photo of an old lady.

    Image credit: Nils Keyland // Public Domain

    Flint and steel is named after the real-world tool that has been used since the iron age for lighting fires. You use the sharp edge of a flint to shave off tiny particles of metal, which then catch fire in the air as sparks. These sparks can then be used to ignite flammable material known as tinder.

    This way of starting fires was very common in Europe from ancient times all the way through to when the friction match was invented in the early 1800s. But it’s not the only way to start a fire. In south-eastern Asia, a device called a “fire piston” can ignite tinder by rapidly compressing a gas so it gets very hot.

    Oh, and in case you’re thinking that Minecraft is being historically inaccurate by substituting iron for steel, you can actually start fires with iron – and in fact this was very common before steel was invented, it just doesn’t work quite as well. Luckily, in Minecraft, it works every time. So no stress. Just one of the little ways we make your life better every day.

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