I used to have a problem with getting stuff to light. Someone said something about balls of cotton wool, it works well, i can get it to light with just a small bit of the fire steel used. After that someone said about bamboo cane and if you get your knife and run if up and down,i have my knife 90' to the garden cane, but a angle is better because it saves the knife.You will get alot of little shavings after a while, when you have some of them, you can light them with the firesteel easy. If you try on a number types of woods, you will be able to see which you get a better number of shavings from. Failing that i got birch bark to light easy aswell. it took some practice, but when you get the right shape, the sparks go onto the birch bark and it lights. I found if i rolled it out, put the firesteel down near the end closest to you, and let the rest curl up, you can get it to light.
You can also light a camping gas stove with it. It takes some practice to make the sparks go in. Be careful doing this, dont turn the gas up too much and stand back. The gas flames will/can go up high, very high, i was amazed of how high it went. I dont know why it went so high, does anyone know?