Product Review: Spanish Colonial Strike a light

Often times the interpretation of life in Spanish Colonial ,and later early Mexican era Republic is focused solely on items of a military nature, or weaponry. While these are important for developing personas, it's also important to continue to raise levels of authenticity for the "non military" facets of the daily life of both Spanish colonial, and later Mexican, soldados. In the realm of these more "mundane" items comes the simple nature of starting a camp fire. Prior to the widespread use of friction matches, the most common method was the use of a steel striker and piece of flint rock. It is therefore quite common to include such a fire starting kit with one's impression. Reproductions though vary wildly from the fanciful to the fantasy. When I decided to incorporate this piece in my overall quest to develop a more campaign oriented soldado impression, I decide to try and find a steel striker more aligned to what was available in Colonial and Republic era Mexico. This actually turned out to be more difficult then I originally thought, there is currently no known striker documented to be found at Tex. Rev. sites. There are however several types found ant Colonial Mexican sites. A great reference was Southwestern Colonial Ironwork: The Spanish Blacksmithing Tradition by Simmons & Turley. If you have any interest in learning more about the nature of iron work in Spanish America, BUY THIS BOOK ! Simmons &  Turley gave me a great starting point and pictures of actual artifacts. See Below:

 

In terms of a reproduction though, vendors were limited. In fact, outside of finding a custom blacksmith, finding one that matched these was few. Eventually, I did find one priced at $20 from Black Bear Forge. Pictured below:

 

Listed as a "Spanish Colonial Striker" this piece was very solid. Much higher quality then a typical striker, this piece showers sparks beautifully. Visually, it does resemble many of the Spanish "2 curl" styles found at archeological sites. Some of the drawbacks I found were the Makers mark ( a bear paw) and maker's name (Switzer) stamped on the other side. These are really just cosmetic though, and can be filed. For $20 this is an excellent piece for interpretive work and I recommend it to anyone wanting to focus not just on the weaponry of a soldado, but also on the bigger picture of how they lived their daily lives.

 

Accuracy: 9/10 Outside of the maker's marks, this piece is pretty spot on.

Use: 10/10 You'll get a lot of mileage out of this striker, this piece is vastly superior to a lot of sutler row mass produced strikers.

Purchase: For $20, this is an excellent investment.