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| The Science of Fire |
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| Written by British Red | ||||||||||
Page 6 of 8 | ||||||||||
| (Part 5) Tinder Ignition - Continued   Horses hoof fungus. The horses hoof (or false tinder fungus) grows on dead Birch trees. It has three distinct layers - a very thin crusty outer layer, a thin (1 or 2 mm) leathery layer of amadou and a thick corky spore layer. The crusty outer and spore layer need to be removed and the leathery layer either dried and roughed up with a knife blade or boiled in wood ash, pounded and fluffed which some claim improves the fire taking qualities.A horses hoof fungus and prepared amadou Prepared chagga fungus True tinder fungus or chagga. Chagga fungus looks like a black lumpy burr on the side of a birch tree. Dried and crumbled it makes excellent tinder and is particularly effective in fire pistons.  Punk wood: Punk wood is the soft powdery wood found in the middle of rotten logs that is almost as light as balsa wood. It can often be found dry by knocking or kicking apart rotten logs. Be sure to dry it or dry out damp stuff before needed. It light very easily since its well mixed with air already. If charred like char cloth it will catch and burn from a cool spark. Dry punk wood Tinder made from fine or adapted fuels:  Feather stick: In making a feather stick, fine curls of wood are shaved from a dry stick leaving them attached to the main stick. The finer the curl, the easier they are to ignite – some practice is required to get good and quick at this. I have had excellent results by using an axe to split a wet log to get to the dry wood inside, chopping thing pieces of dry wood and then feathering them. A finely feathered stick can be lit with a match – a very well made one ignited with a spark from a ferrocium rod. A finely feathered stick |
  Butane: You may know butane as a stove fuel, but it is of course a vaporised hydrocarbon – its also lighter fuel! The heat source in a lighter is the piezoelectric spark or “flint”. Its butane vapour that provides the “tinder”.A "Windmill Lighter" The cooler trusty "zippo" Petrol: Petrol vapour (liquid petrol doesn’t burn – just the vapour) is what powers the trusty Zippo lighter. |
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Latest Articles
| Photography - Back to Basics (08.12.2008) |
Back to Basics is about getting more from your outdoor experience by increasing your skills in an area you might not have thought of before. |
We all love to take photographs and keep a record of what we've done and where we have been. Michelle Jones has written this article is for those starting out into photography so that you can get the most from your camera and what you are trying to capture.
| Fish Trap (01.04.2008) |
 I used Hazel wood. Choose the
thin long shoots of wood which i would think are a couple of years old.
If you don't catch anything at first don't worry. It may just be a case of
changing a few things.
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| Birch Tar - How to collect it (23.02.2008) |
 Most bushcrafters know that Birch bark is fantastic for fire lighting
because of all the oil concealed within it. This tutorial guides you
through the process of extracting that tar from the bark.
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| Wild Wine (Part 8) (28.11.2007) |
 Now we could bung a label on (which should always say they type of wine and when it was bottled). I suggest you cross-reference to a book of recipes and notes so that when you get a cracking wine you can recreate it. We are going to add a little something to the presentation of the wine by putting a foil cap over the neck. First we drop a foil cap (available for a couple of pence from a wine shop) over the bottle neck.
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| Wild Wine (Part 7) (26.11.2007) |
 Right, we now have clean, fined and filtered wine. We pour it into clean (yes and sterilised) bottles with a funnel. We need to cork it. Its possible to put corks in with a mallet. I use a corking gun and waxed corks that do not need to be soaked (plain corks do)
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| Wild Wine )Part 6) (23.11.2007) |
 Well, the finings have worked – the wine is beautifully clear.
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Most Popular Articles
| Paracord Bracelet Tutorial (23.04.2007) |
 As soon as I'd finished my Paracord Bracelet, I'd decided to write a tutorial on making one. A good thing considering the majority of the responses since I posted it were asking me how to do it! Here goes.. You will need approximately 3 metres of paracord with the ends already sealed/melted, and something to make a temporary knot - a twist tie or piece of string should suffice.
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| Tarps - Benefits and Basic Instructions (16.07.2007) |
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| How to Sharpen an Axe (09.07.2007) |
 I have been asked a number of times recently to provide some advice of guidance on the best way to sharpen an axe. Whilst I am always happy to provide input, I thought that it might be worthwhile to put together a tutorial on the basic techniques. The techniques used in here are intended to provide not only a sharp axe but also a safe and efficient axe.
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| Bannock (05.04.2007) |
There was a period in my life where I lived out of a pack for months at a time and this was one of my staples.
I like to coil it like a rope on a stick and bake it over hot coals...
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| Berry Picker (23.04.2007) |
 There are many different ways you can make a berry picker but this is just a design i came up with which uses a packet of kebab skiewers and some discs of wood.
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| Fire By Friction - Using a fire-kit made with stone tools (31.05.2007) |
 The whole kit took less than three hours to finally pull together — though that really overlooks by far the most time-consuming aspect, the preparation of materials. In fact, preparation has two components, actually. The first is the selection of materials. The second is the actual preparation.
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