An everyday lighter designed to stand the test of time. The Oceanus Brass First Mate’s Flint is strong, refillable and built to last. We wanted to make a timeless firestarter tool that was both rich in heritage and classic in design. A lighter that you could use every day with proud confidence, either on the open ocean or in the great outdoors. The result is a rugged and attractive fire-making tool that is easily operated with one hand.
A design as new as it is old. Our unique hardware is both functionally fun and strikingly clean. The First Mate’s Flint combines our favorite aspects of our original Oceanus Brass products — quality, durability, and efficiency. No outdoors adventurer should be going about without a trusty survival lighter by his side.
Inspired by our nautical heritage, the Oceanus Brass First Mate’s Flint brings sea-worthy, rugged design and functionality to your modern lifestyle. Envisioned while at sea and designed for the most nautical among us, The First Mate’s Flint will keep the fire burning no matter where you go, making it a reliable and easy to carry survival tool.
The tight seal of the cap maintains its parts dry to make sure that it will work even in adverse conditions like snow, wind or rain. There’s no need to wait hours until it is dry, the First Mate’s Flint will throw a spark immediately.
The first natural energy intentionally used by man was fire. When lightning set fire to a tree, the prehistoric man still had no control over it. If the fire acquired from this event went out, it was necessary to wait for another lightning before fire could be obtained again. This fire has helped him enough to cook his food, to light up a place at the desired time, in his heating, and also to protect himself from dangerous animals.
Over generations, man has been able to develop ways to carry and produce fire anywhere, such as lighters. During WWI, for example, soldiers had plenty of free time, so simple lighter designs started popping up. Their ingenious alternative was to piece a lighter out of the casings of the spent bullet, creating the cartridge case lighter, also known as trench lighter. This tool became helpful whenever they found themselves lacking a light for their cigarette or explosive’s fuse.
Waterproof — Brass has been a faithful material to humankind for eons. For almost as long as we have explored the seas, we have relied on brass. Made of solid brass material, the Oceanus Brass First Mate’s Flint is corrosion resistant. Its cap features a reinforced seal so you won’t have to worry about rain, snow or even dropping it in the water by accident. Keep the fire burning no matter where you go.
Hands-free — Unlike gas lighters, the First Mate’s Flint does not require that you keep pressing a button so you can light your fire. No need to worry about getting your thumb burned or emptying the lighter because you got a valve stuck on. This is an essential factor in certain survival scenarios where you won’t be able to use both hands.
Windproof — You want a lighter that will be able to work whenever you hit the switch. Wick-based lighters are optimal for starting a fire when it is very windy. The wheel in the First Mate’s Flint was strategically positioned in a way that it is always in contact with the flint, making it a reliable fire-making tool that every sailor needs when out in the open seas.
The First Mate’s Flint makes it easy to replace the flint — it is not only simple, but it works with ferrocerium flint, a synthetic pyrophoric alloy that generates hot sparks that can ignite under adverse conditions. Most lighters, including butane lighters, use ferrocerium. That means you can even reuse the flint from your used disposable lighter.
While ferrocerium-and-steels function in a similar manner to natural flint-and-steel in fire-starting, ferrocerium takes on the role that steel performed in traditional methods: when small shavings are removed quickly enough, the heat generated by friction is sufficient to ignite those shavings, turning the metal to the oxide — the sparks are tiny pieces of burning metal that can reach temperatures of 5,430 ° F (3,000 °C ).
Replacing the flint on the First Mate’s Flint is very straightforward. Remove the insert from the body and turn it over, you will find a brass screw. Unscrew the flint spring using a screwdriver or a coin and it will come out — you’ll notice the flint sits on the tip of the spring. Remove the remaining piece of flint from the spring and place a new one. Insert the spring back into the brass tube and you are good to go.
If you want a lighter that you can use every day with confidence then you want it to be refillable and versatile. The First Mate’s Flint has the best of both worlds — its removable, solid brass bottom compartment can safely store any flammable fuel that ignites when a spark is applied to it. Having a lighter that works with different fuel options is especially important when exploring remote areas where you can’t just stop by a shop and acquire more fuel.
Some of these fuels are:
We don’t often realize how bad for our health are traditional lighters: butane fumes are not only poisonous to humans and animals, but also to the environment.
Common disposable gas lighters are built to be discarded after running out of gas. When this happens, they will always exist in our environment. After being used, disposable lighters will either make their way to landfills, be littered on the streets, be washed into the ocean and can make their way devastatingly into the bellies of seabirds.
Non-disposable lighters are a planet-friendlier alternative to disposable lighters and help reduce the impact of plastic on the environment – 350 million disposable lighters are tossed every year.
The versatility of the Bow-Shackle made it an indispensable tool on the seas, and it continues to impress today. Although the brass Bow-Shackle is the statement piece of the First Mate’s Flint we have made it independently available through this Kickstarter campaign as a gift for backers at our $10 tier. Creativity is your only boundary when putting the Bow-Shackle to use.
The Bow-Shackle makes for a helpful attachment point. There’s really no excuse for losing your flint. You can easily attach it to your backpack, sailing jacket or any outdoor equipment. Don’t be that guy who’s always borrowing a lighter.
We have taken our inspiration—The Bow-Shackle —and transformed it along with our other components into our own signature hardware. To do this, we had to learn a little bit of just about everything from boat building, design, and engineering to metal machining. Our signature shackles are found in each style of our products.
The First Mate’s Flint has been manufactured to thrive over decades of use. What was once a labor of love, is now a timeless nautical tool available for all, but we need your help to make this dream a reality. Our products are steeply discounted off of the coming retail prices because we want to reward our very first customers. The opportunity to purchase a functionally lighter of this magnitude is rare. With solid machined brass, our finishing assembly, our master craftsmanship, the First Mate’s Flint with your help shall become an heirloom for you to pass down.
The Oceanus Brass First Mate’s Flint is currently spec’d to be as followed. As with any project not yet complete, these dimensions may change slightly over time as we optimize our systems:
Length (Without Bow-Shackle): 48mm
Length (With Bow-Shackle): 66mm
Width (Without Bow-Shackle): 14mm
Width (With Bow-Shackle): 20mm
Weight: 39.7g (1.40 oz)
With our design roots in Boston, our company draws creative inspiration from the hub of America’s rich nautical history. In developing our product, our original prototypes and inspiration came from the old shipyards of East Boston.
The nautically-inspired First Mate’s Flint harkens back to a time of adventure on open seas, its durability a testament to the harsh demands of that bygone era.
Our hardware is tied to the art and science of sailing and exploration. We’ve spent three months refining the First Mate’s Flint into its final, perfectly balanced form.
Inspired by nautical-grade hardware, The First Mate’s Flint is Oceanus’s signature survival good. Its unique design, solid construction, and practical beauty are perfect for everyday use, travel, or adventure.
We launched Oceanus because we wanted to share our nautically inspired lighter with the world and turn an idea into action. A project that was both challenging and rewarding, the First Mate’s Flint is something we are very proud to share with you. We hope to encourage others to try their hand at something new just as we did, to build something of their own, to go through that exploration process of learning and bringing inspiration to fruition. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the many relationships we’ve built along the way with industrial designers and manufacturers who helped us push the boundaries of what we were told was possible.
Since launching our first product, the Oceanus Brass – Bow Shackle Pen, we are so proud to have been embraced by the ocean-loving community. Below are a few of our favorite excerpts of what the experts are saying about our products;
Life In The Slow Lane| Blog: “It’s a beautiful pen and we’ll enjoy having it on our boat, and it’ll make a wonderful heirloom to pass down to our grandson one day. Maybe he’ll even have a special boat to keep it on.”
My2Fish| Blog: “The solid brass construction is nearly indestructible, so for the cost of pen ink refill every couple of years, this pen will likely last forever.”
Sailing Britican| Blog: “In the past, I’ve been known to tape string to the end of a pen or tie string around a cap but it inevitably fails when someone gives a little tug and off my pen goes. In other words, my efforts to prevent other pen thieves have failed miserably…but not with my bow-shackle pen! I have it attached to my nav station book rail.”
Dinghy Dreams| Blog: “Even though I’m ink rich right now I keep navigating back to the same one, my shackle pen by Oceanus Brass. Nautically inspired and handcrafted by a small start-up company in Boston, Mass., this pen is nearly impossible to lose as it has a shackle to attach to logbooks, dry bags, or wherever you see fit aboard your vessel. As I’ve been route planning for my upcoming voyage this pen has been seeing much use and it writes just as smoothly as the day it came out of the box.”
To keep up the momentum, please share the campaign on social media and or tell your friends, co-workers, and neighbors about us! We are so excited to start making your Oceanus Brass First Mate’s Flint!
These are targeted milestones for us to hit as a community. If we do hit these goals, each and every backer benefits! We’ll send out the item from the corresponding tier with each First Mate’s Flint, depending on where we finish. Below is the breakdown of stretch goals:
This is our 10th Kickstarter campaign! For once, there are really limited risks here. We offer you a simple tool, which has already been mostly developed. Remember, we built this lighter for our own use first. Through previous engagements, our Master Craftswoman has worked with many of our prospective manufacturers in the past. As well as being produced on a smaller scale, this is the simplest product many of our team members have ever worked on, and this fact has allowed us to focus on build quality.
We are confident and passionate about delivering quality goods. We have spent months designing and prototyping our products, executing pre-production runs to ensure we can meet our high standard. We have internally funded the design and production of our signature brass hardware. Our resources and team are based here in the United States, primarily on the East Coast, so we do not foresee any issues with our ability to deliver your new Oceanus Brass First Mate’s Flint upon successful funding of our project.
We will keep you up-to-date on the progress of production and let you know of any issues impacting our ability to promptly deliver your new Oceanus products, including steps we are taking to get back on track. We will do our best to manufacture locally as we have done to date but may shift focus onto manufacturing overseas if doing so will result in delay avoidance or quality consistency. We stand ready to resolve any challenges to make sure you have a positive experience with our service and product!