Owner Review by steven miller

OWNER REVIEW - Diamond Strike Anywhere Matches - Large Kitchen Matches
Date: March 9, 2006

Name: Steven H. Miller
Age: 52
Gender: Male
Height: 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m)
Weight: 175 lb (79 kg)
Email address: metaphorce@earthlink.net
City: Pacific Palisades, CA

Backpacking Background: I began backpacking in the early 1980's, trekking in the mountains and deserts of California. I stopped backpacking after I got married in the late 80's. Now my sons are 10 and 13, and I've had to resurrect my equipment, my skills, and many long-neglected muscles. I recently took my first backpacking (as opposed to car-camping) trip in 20 years. I tend towards short tenting trips, pack too much and end up carrying over 40 lb. in the desert (including water). I'm looking for ways to cut it down without sacrificing creature comforts.

PRODUCT INFORMATION: Diamond Brands, Incorporated
Year of manufacture: 2005
Website: http://www.diamondbrands.com/
Listed weight: Not given
Weight as delivered: 0.01 oz / 0.22 gr (averaged)
Measured Width (shaft): 0.125 in / 3.2 mm
Measured Width (head): 0.15 in / 3.7 mm
Measured Length: 2.32 in / 59 mm
MSRP: N/A

These matches cannot be legally sold in some states such as Michigan and Minnesota.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:

Diamond Strike-Anywhere Kitchen Match showing the red head with white dot

A Diamond Strike Anywhere Large Kitchen Match is a simple fire starting device. It has no moving parts. It is a wooden match made of a stick of Aspen wood with one tip dipped in a chemical paste. The wood (or "splint") is very light-colored. The match head is red with a white dot on the end of it. (The white dot distinguishes "strike anywhere" matches from the all-red-head matches which can only be ignited by scraping on the special striking surface included with the packaging.) The main fuel ingredient of the match-head is sulfur, but there are actually over twenty ingredients that serve to bind the match head together, keep it burning, and control the ignition and burn-rate.

The matches are packaged in a cardboard slide-drawer box. Two sides of the outer slide-case are surfaced with a textured coating in a pattern of tiny hexagons, designed to facilitate striking the match. However, as the name implies, these matches can be lit by striking on a wide variety of other surfaces.

The match is ignited by gently and briskly scraping the white tip across a slightly rough surface. When done correctly, the match head sparks and then bursts into flame. Generally, a surface that is hard and has a fine texture is ideal for striking. Scraping on really smooth surfaces such as polished stainless steel will not create enough friction to ignite the match. Very rough surfaces will often scrape the chemical igniter (the white dot) right off the match head... without igniting.

Striking surface on the side of the match package

Striking surface on the side of the match package

The match flame can be easily extinguished by blowing on it hard, by giving it a vigorous shake, or by snuffing it in water or almost anything else damp. In the case of campfires, the match can also be thrown into the campfire without being extinguished, where it will be consumed by flames.

"Product Features" as listed on the package:

Easy to Light
Strong, sturdy splint
Safe, non-toxic head
Burns clean with minimal smoke
Ideal for lighting candles, stoves, grills, fireplaces, campfires and more

By some standards, these matches might be considered very low-tech, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Considering the place of fire in human history, matches are a fairly sophisticated invention, meeting one of the oldest human needs in an extremely easy, accessible and inexpensive way. A caveman would have sacrificed half a village to get his hands on this kind of technology, but we can buy hundreds of them at any supermarket for about the price of a burger. They were fairly revolutionary when they were invented over a hundred years ago, and they still do exactly what they were designed for, just as well as they ever did.

These matches are typically sold in boxes of 250. I recently bought a three-pack of these boxes - 750 matches total - at my local supermarket for $2.99 US. That's less than $0.004 per match.

FIELD INFORMATION
LOCATIONS:
Car Camping: Sawmill Mountain in Angeles National Forest 5200 ft / 1600 m.
Hidden Falls campground in Mountain Home State Forest 6200 ft / 1900 m.
Wheeler Gorge Campground in Los Padre National Forest 1800 ft / 550 m.
White Tank campground 3800 ft / 1150 m and Jumbo Rocks campground 4400 ft / 1350 m, both in Joshua Tree National Park.
Backpacking: Pinto Basin in Joshua Tree National Park 1500 ft /450 m -1600 ft / 500 m.

DESCRIPTION OF LOCATIONS:
Sawmill Mountain is a dry campsite shaded by California live oaks and long-needled pine trees. It can be very windy, and has several signs warning of high fire danger. Fires are only allowed in designated fire-rings.

Mountain Home State Demonstration Forest is a redwood forest in the southern part of Sequoia National Forest, just south of Sequoia National Park. The campsites at Hidden Falls are some distance from the parking lot, ranged along the rim of a rock gorge featuring a series of dramatic waterfalls.

Wheeler Gorge is a narrow gorge in the Coastal Range north of Ojai, California. The campsites are along a stream, and most have lots of shade-trees.

Joshua Tree National Park is a desert park on the interface of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, offering several different kinds of terrain at varying elevations. Jumbo Rocks and White Tank campgrounds are in the high desert, in an area of small loping hills and enormous rough rock outcroppings. Pinto Basin is flat desert and very sandy. It is completely unsheltered from wind.

WEATHER CONDITIONS:
Sawmill Mountain was dry and windy when we visited there in mid-Summer. Temperature at night dropped to about 45-50 F / 7-10 C.

Mountain Home State Demonstration Forest in late summer was warm during the day, colder at night (probably about 45 F / 7 C). No rain, but considerable dew in the morning. The wind was moderate.

Wheeler Gorge in late summer was quite hot during the day, cool but not cold at night (probably 50-55 F / 10-13 C). Wind was moderate.

Joshua Tree in winter has mild daytime temperatures, despite being in the desert. It was sometimes as low as 55 F / 13 C during the day, and never got above about 75 F / 24 C while we were there. Nights can get quite cold, however. Pinto Basin on a January night was about 35 F / 2 C with extremely strong winds. On our trip to White Tank, we encountered one of those rare and exciting desert rainstorms when we first arrived, and the ground was actually damp beneath our tent throughout our stay. The hills and rock formations in White Tank and Jumbo Rocks sheltered us somewhat from the wind.

FIELD PERFORMANCE:
I have been using these matching for many years. About 25 years ago, I purchased a small leather drawstring pouch and have been storing matches in it ever since. When I resumed camping and backpacking activities after a hiatus of more than a dozen years, the matches in the pouch still worked. They appear to have a very long shelf-life as long as they are kept dry. Match-heads that get moist have a tendency to disintegrate when struck.

If a burning match is held at a slight downward angle, it will keep burning right up the entire length of the splint. The angle that gives me the most consistent burn for the longest time looks like a clock-hand pointing to 3:30 (with the match held in my left hand.)

The practical burning time depends partly on how close the user is willing to let the fire get to his/her fingers. I hold my matches in the middle for striking, then move my fingertips all the way to the end. I extinguish them when there is about 0.5 in / 13mm of uncharred wood left. In windless conditions near sea level at an ambient temperature of about 65 F / 36 C, this yields a burn time of approximately 25 seconds. I have had some matches that burn more than 30 seconds this way. Others burn up more quickly.

This brings me to one of the most significant aspects of this product, its inconsistency. Matches are a very cheap product, and quality control is fairly loose. As might be expected, the wood splint is very variable in strength and structure. This results in a certain percentage of match splints splitting or shearing off when struck. Usually when a match has broken while being struck, the head has not ignited. A few times, I have had to contend with a flaming match-head flying off the stick, but this has been rare. Sometimes the match will split partially and ignite, so I'm left with a flaming end dangling at a peculiar angle, with a flame that is difficult to control and likely to fly off flamboyant if I shake it in an attempt to extinguish it.

There is also considerable inconsistency in the structure of the match head. On some matches the white dot covers a quarter of the match head. On others it's just a tiny dot on the very tip. The smaller the white dot, the more difficult it is to get the match to ignite. If a match with a small dot is scraped at a very accurate perpendicular angle, it has a good chance of igniting on the first try. But if it fails to ignite, too much of the white may be scraped off in the first attempt, dooming future attempts to further failures. I have learned over the years that I can be very casual about the striking angle I use with a match that has a large white dot, but a small-dotted match has to be held and struck carefully if success is to be achieved.

Variation in the size of the white dot on the match heads

The variation in the size of the white dot.

Despite these difficulties, Diamond Strike Anywhere Large Kitchen Matches are my preferred fire-starting system. I have used these matches in cold and windy conditions, and they have always worked. Not every single match worked, but I was always able to light the fire, stove, or lantern within a few tries. I have not tried to use them in pouring rain, however.

These matches are extremely useful for a wide variety of igniting and burning uses. When lighting a campfire built in a steel fire ring (such as are becoming quite common in our national park campgrounds), I can torch my underlayment of newspaper at three or four different spots on a single match. When backpacking, they are perfect for lighting my liquid-fuel stoves. My Svea 123R used with fire-paste pretty much requires something long and thin to be inserted through one of the holes in the brass windscreen-case. This would be difficult with most flint-strikers, and probably with most liquid-fuel lighters, but a kitchen match is perfect. With my MSR Dragonfly stove, I am very happy to have my fingers as far from the naked liquid fuel as possible when I ignite it, and the length of a large kitchen match provides a very comfortable distance. I am equally grateful for this distance when lighting my new soda-can alcohol stove. My Coleman liquid fuel lantern requires ignition through a very small porthole. The kitchen match fits the aperture of the hole and the distance to the mantle perfectly, and allows me to keep the burning match near the mantle for quite a while, which is very useful when the lantern is hesitating to light up.

My match-pouch and striking-rock, with a few matches

My match-pouch and striking-rock, with a few matches

In campgrounds, I can usually strike a match successfully on the side of a concrete picnic table, or on the side of a steel fire-ring if it has rusted sufficiently to give it a bit of gritty texture. When backpacking, however, good striking surfaces are not always immediately handy. For this reason, I carry a small, flat rock in my match-pouch. It is an excellent striking surface. It allows me to "cup" the match with my hands - that is, use my hands as a wind-screen - very quickly after striking, to protect the match from being blown out in high winds. It also allows me to bring the striking surface near the target (campfire, stove, lantern) thus reducing the amount of space and time the match has to travel between striking and igniting the target, giving the match less chance to get blown out. It is very predictable, too which reduces the number of wasted matches.

Diamond Strike Anywhere Large Kitchen Matches are useful for a variety of other purposes. They can serve as a short-term temporary light source (like while I'm searching for where I put down my flashlight). They are good for flame-welding the end of nylon cord so it doesn't fray and unravel. I've also whittled a match down with my pocket knife for use as an emergency toothpick.

They weigh next to nothing. I routinely carry about three times as many matches as I expect to use. The weight difference in my pack with a full supply of matches VS an empty match-pouch is not noticeable at all.

SAFETY CONCERNS

Strike anywhere matches are not allowed to be carried on airplanes in the US, neither as carry-on items nor in luggage. (Neither are lighters. Only safety matches are allowed, and they must be carried on one's person.) This is possibly because strike anywhere matches can spontaneously ignite if they are jarred. I once saw my father drop a closed box of strike anywhere matches on the floor, and the entire box burst into flames with a whoosh. It was quite shocking.

SUMMARY
These matches are lightweight, cheap, handy, and reasonably reliable. They are the best way I've found to accomplish several fire lighting tasks, such as stoves or lanterns that require ignition through a small port hole. They provide a measure of safety for my fingers in most fire lighting tasks. They burn for a long time. They keep well for a long time. Some of them fail, some of them break, but enough of them work to make a very usable and cost-effective fire lighting system. This match may not be made in heaven, but it suits me well.

LIKES:
Lightweight
Easily obtainable
Reasonably reliable
Long enough to keep my fingers away from the fire
Enough burn-time to accomplish difficult ignition tasks

DISLIKES:
Sometimes they break

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