You will need a Survival Knife with a carbon steel blade. This is important because a survival knife with a stainless steel blade might not produce the spark you're looking for. The spark comes from little pieces of metal coming off of the striker or Survival Knife in our case. That's why we use the backside of the blade and not the sharp surface. Using the cutting surface will make your blade dull. That is also why a stainless steel blade may not work. The harder the steel, the smaller and hotter the pieces that come off will be, making it easier to burn the tinder and get our flame going.
You will also need a strike rod. No, not the variety they used to beat a red-headed stepchild in years past. A strike rod is usually made of magnesium or a mixture of steel and magnesium. I recommend you use a string to affix it to your survival knife if the handle of your knife has a hole that you can use, or attach it to your survival knife's sheath. At the very least a strike rod should be always available in your survival kit.
You will also need carefully prepared tinder. Use your Survival Knife to trim dry bark off of trees, if possible dead tree limbs. Dried grass or the cotton like material behind some tree barks like a cottonwood make excellent tinder. Shape the tinder in to a bird's nest, this provides the glowing embers some shielding from the wind. Try to keep the material as loose as possible. Don't bunch it together like a snowball. Loose material has more gaps where oxygen can fuel the flames.
How do you actually make a fire with your Survival Knife?
Clean the ground of debris where you are going to build the fire. Clean an area wider than you need to. Safety is always critical. You want to use the fire for warmth and to cook food for survival. You don't want to discover how the U.S. Forest Service trains their firefighters.
Pre Build your bundle of kindling, making a tee-pee frame. Leave yourself a space to place the burning tinder in to the middle of the tee-pee structure of kindle wood. Try to use the cover of your surroundings to avoid strong winds or rain from directly hitting the site where you plan to build your fire. This will make your job easier when conditions are less than perfect.
Gather your tinder. You want loosely spaced, very fine thread-like shavings put together with slightly thicker shavings. A birds nest configuration should work well because it has built-in protection from the wind. If you need to, you can smash thicker bark against a rock to expand the fibers of the wood. You can use your survival knife to make small thin shavings from bark. Some barks like Juniper or Cottonwood are especially great for tinder but any dry bark should do well. Dried grass can also be used. It isn't a bad idea to save this kind of tinder in a dry Ziploc bag for future use. The tinder will need to be dry. While you can most likely get away with wood or even kindling that isn't completely dry, you will be out of luck if your tinder is wet.