I'd like to first thank all involved in this pass around, for both letting me participate, and letting me be the first so I could use it as it would be used, at a campsite.
I had not read the amount of info in this thread's second post before taking it off into the woods, specifically the parts about tinder amount and prep. I had watched about 8 youtube vids and had idea of how a fire piston generally worked. You slam a rod into a tube with tinder sticking out of the rod. I thought it'd be this easy. I had alot of trouble, and I'll try to explain how I was using it as a possible answer.
The piston we are using in this pass around has an o-ring in the front(tinder end) to really make it air tight. This has to make it incredibly efficient, but it also makes it incredibly hard to push on, since all the trapped air is pushing back at the same time. I first used it holding tube in left hand and slamming rod down into it with right palm. This just gave me sore palms. I then got on the floor, inserted rod into tube, and slammed tube downward onto rod with my right hand. This would not work either, but
it's the way I eventually got it to work.
At this point it was the first night with it before the trip, and I wasn't having luck. I kept re lubing the rod with chapstick, and fearing not enough lube, I even used 3-in-1 Oil on half the rod, still with no luck. Now if it was that slick and not igniting, I wasn't sure what the heck to do.
On the second night of the trip, I start telling my freinds that I'd brought this thing out with me to try, and write a review for. I thought I'd get mildly razzed for being a dork like that, but eveyone sounded interested and wanted to see it. So I brought it to the fire ring and went to work. I explained how it worked, and then lubed with chapstick and went to work.
The method this time was again to be crouching and stick the rod just inside the tube, just past the o-ring so it wouldn't fall out. Then I'd grasp the tube with rod sticking out the bottom, raise it in the air and smash it as hard as I could a on a rock.
Ka-POW!
Bang-O!
Well this thing is titamium, and you all want a real world review, so I wasn't going to baby it. The damn rock woulda broke first, and this is how it's inteded to be used from what I saw in the vids. Except in exodus's reviews there's a pretty hefty looking arm slamming it on a wooden table, and getting it lit every time. And then here's my little arms raising it high in the air and trying to split a rock in half. And then it lit.
After about 5 tries it worked. Cheers and revelry, I did it!!
I had to literally hit this against a rock as hard as I could to get it to light. Now,
why that's the only way I got it to work, could be a number of things. I'm not as strong as exodus, that's a given, so I probably cannot give it enough compression as fast and as in little distance as him.
Anoher is, I didn't know how much tinder to use, or how to place it exactly.
When it was lit, the char cloth did not just fall out. I wouldn't even come out. It had had to be dug out, with a twig. Which of coarse, snuffed the ember out.
So having lit it once, I declared myself champion and gave it a rest. "J" then took his turn. He loaded it with tinder, and began hitting it on a rock. After about 3 tries he slams it so hard that on the back swing/recoil the rod just popped out on it's own,
but with the tinder lit.
We all felt that counted, so props to him for trying it. No one else showed interest after that, and it was not used again.
I was a bit angry with it, it frustrated me. The ease of use shown in the two posted vids, and the other vids of people with wooden ones either confirmed I wasn't doing something right, or I'm not putting enough *umph* behind it.
So my final thoughts are that this particular piston was very well designed, crafted, and styled. Even being smooth titanium, it never slipped from my hand. Having the inner rod bored out is nice, because it can potentially hold a toothpick(which I now realize I did not replace, sorry!) or straightened paper clip. If boring it cuts down it's weight, even better.
Since it is so airtight, it cannot be pushed together/collapsed for storage. The bored end of the rod does slide down into the tube, but not tightly, so it just slides back out.
The way this is designed, having the air trapped so well and making enough pressure that it recoils that hard, made it next to impossible for me to use.
Again, I might not have had the tinder arranged right in it.
But I'm not soured on fire pistons now. I'd like to try one of the wooden ones, or one without as much recoil, to see if I could use it by slamming the rod into tube with my palm.
Good luck to the next participants!