A poor alliteration but never mind!!

I started a thread on the firecraft forum asking about charloth and was directed to this excellent tutorial by tadpole and also this one by maver. Both are really all you'll ever need.

I was musing about starting fires and the path from spark to emberto flame. The starting points can be any of the 3, a spark from a flint and steel or a firesteel, an ember from a bow drill or a fungus, or a flame from a match or lighter. The flame conveniently goes from spark to flame without passing go but I could only get to flame from my firesteel by setting light to one of my wifes cottonwool makeup pads and it always felt like cheating! Hence the charcloth experiment.

I started off with and old biccie tin and an old cotton tshirt. I chose a polo shirt which had a sort of waffle pattern in it which apparently helps to catch the spark. I've just noticed how most of my bushcrafting seems to start off with a old biccie tin!!

I was going to do the cooking on this fella and I prepped the tin by banging a nail through it and trimming a stick down to fit.

At this point the Tshirt was cut up into smaller bits making sure that I left off the hems and buttons etc, just use the plain material. The pile shown here was just the back of the shirt.

Got the fire going and then lobbed the tin on the grate to simmer for a while. I kept an eye on it and sure enough after a wee while smoking started coming out the hole on top, I left it to smoke a while and then poked a lit taper into it and it started burning. I'm assuming it's flammable carbon monoxide? It burnt for a good while and then went out, I relit it once and then when it went out again I stuck the stick in the wee hole and left it for 5 more minutes. Removing it from the fire I was tempted to open it but it was too warm so it was left to cool for a while. It was still pretty hot but I opened it anyway and looked in, a couple of brown ones on top but a boatload of black ones underneath. Removing one of the black ones I noticed that there was a wee glow on the one below, the thing had started burning! I cursed my impatience and whacked the lid back on a sealed the hole again. Still I had a piece out that I could play with.

I lit the edge of it and watched it glow, an amazing thing to watch! I got a little kitchen roll and with a bit of blowing coaxed it into a flame. Happy camper!

After the tin had cooled completely(!) it gave me enough charcloth for a year!

All in all, it was surprisingly easy to do, much easier if I hadn't been so impatient.

Cheers,

Alan