The magnesium firestarter - A how-to

For years now, I've watched discussions unfold about the relative merits of the magnesium firestarter. Some people decry it as useless, others swear by it. One thing though that seems universal is in the methods used to employ one of these firestarters. The two most common are the knife method, basically following the instructions on the packaging, which uses a knife to scrape down the flat edge of the block to get magnesium shavings and the use of a file to accomplish the same.
The file is probably the easier of the two, assuming you have a sufficiently coarse file. If not, you'll be there for a long time. Either method will take a while and the shavings are typically almost powdery and quite light, which can make it difficult to keep them all in a neat little pile if it is windy. I think I have a better method. If you follow the video link below, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Addendum: It has come to my attention, courtesy of the crew at Wilderness Innovation that the Coghlan brand firestarters like what I have and that you see in the video, have an issue with the striker bar coming loose. It appears that the glue holding them in place just isn't very good and if you drop the firestarter, the striker rod may very well pop out. I tested this myself and sure enough; after only two drops on to a hard surface from roughly 3 feet, the striker bar popped out. I secured it in place with some flexible cyanoacrylate glue. Furthermore, the WI crew have also discovered that some of the generic magnesium firestarters work incredibly poorly or not at all. Your best bet will be to stick to a recognized brand like Doan. Caveat Emptor, folks.