A quick story about my first experience in making a new handle for a Ferro Rod, I had traded for pair of BHK's with natural Micarta scales and made a couple of new sheaths for them that included Ferro Rod sleeves on the sides of each sheath.
The only Rods I had already had those plastic thumb handles on them, so I had to free the rods from their existing handles, my idea was to use something that would somewhat match the color of the Micarta knife scales, I chose a couple of deer leg bones which I shaped and sanded to the Right size but still retained the ball socket of the bone like a pommel, then drilled the end for a leather lanyard, and dyed them a near match to the knife scales.
My first idea to remove the plastic handle from the ferro rod was to cut it off flush at it's existing handle, so I screwed the plastic handle into the jaws of my hobby vice, place a folded paper towel on my bench top to catch the saw filings and give it a go, it only took one pass with the saw to set the paper towel on fire from the ensuing sparks.
OK, next, no problem, I'll just heat up the rod with my propane torch and melt the plastic handle enough to pull it out, well the rod started to get red in no time flat, so I took the heat away figuring it was good enough, but the rod turned from a dull red to a glowing cherry color, and then took on a hint of straw color ( this thing was now heating itself up) and it started to slowly droop, lucky for me I had emptied my pack and had laid my small 6" inch cast iron skillet on the end of my work bench, I grabbed the skillet just in time to place it under the drooping fire rod as it broke away from it's handle and headed for the carpeted floor of my work shop, as soon as it hit the cold cast iron it started to throw sparks and shrivel up, looking like a piece of cat scat.
For anyone not accustomed to how ferro rods react when heated, they act very much like willie peter, you can't put it out once it starts burning, and if you think throwing it away from you is a good idea, are you ever in for a surprise, the stuff explodes violently.
A few months later at one of our bushcraft meets I mentioned what had happened with the ferro rod to one of our regulars and he started to laugh, then he asked if anyone had a bic lighter they didn't need, someone did and he took it apart to rescue the flint (which is actually a small ferro rod) and the spring that the flint rests on, then he stuck the flint into the spring as a holder and took another lighter and used it to heat up the flint, it didn't take long to get the piece of flint glowing, then he threw it at a good sized boulder and it, as small as it was, exploded like an M-80 sending a huge ball of sparks in the air, the point is, don't fool with ferro rods if you don't know what they are capable of doing.
I did end up freeing the rods from the holders by sticking them in boiling water for a minute or two and the came out easily, I then used epoxy to bond the rods to the bone handles, they came out looking very good, but my not knowing how to treat ferro rod material could have ended up bad if I hadn't been so lucky.
