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Natural Tinders for Flint and Steel |
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Written by Jeff Wagner
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Page 1 of 2 The use of charcloth in primitive fire starting represents something of a chicken and egg conundrum. In order to make charcloth, one first needs fire… and to make fire most primitive pyro’s use charcloth. So…where do you start and are there alternative ways to get a cook fire ablaze with flint and steel? You bet! Actually, the use of charred cloth is a relatively “modern” development and one that requires the availability of woven cotton fabric.
 Cloth being a rather valuable commodity on the frontier, the Missus Long Hunters of yesterday took a rather dim view of “smouldering the family duds” just to make something that catches a spark. Thankfully, nature provides a number of tinders that will catch and propagate a spark from a flint striker - but they need to be handled a little differently from the eyebrow-singeing whoosh of tow and charcloth. (Note - There are natural tinders that perform after chemical alteration and special treatments, however, to maintain the natural flavour of this article we will focus only on those requiring no special treatment other than drying).
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 With charcloth, the fibre nest is blown into flame using the heat given off directly by the charcloth. Most of the natural tinders develop an outer layer of ash as they burn that insulates the fibre nest from the direct heat of the coal and inhibits direct ignition of the fibres – in other words…no flame. Natural tinders perform best when they are combined with a coal extender and natural fibres. (Please note that while jute, hemp, sisal and other commercially available cordage fibres commonly used in primitive fire making are natural, they do not carry a coal well nor do they grow on the North American continent.) Coal extenders cause the tiny spark from the striker to grow and expand producing more and more heat until combustion temperature is reached. Common examples of coal extenders include certain types of fungi such as hoof fungus (Fomes Fomentarious), true tinder fungus (Inonotus Obliquus), piths from weed stalks such as mullein, the shredded inner bark of trees such as cedar and plain ordinary punk or rotten wood. Punk, sometimes called “touch wood”, will propagate a coal as well as tinder fungus. Once the punk is touch by the glowing ember it will spread until the entire piece becomes a large smouldering coal that’s difficult to extinguish. |
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 OK, so we’ve been out foraging and have our coal extender ready. Now what? We need something to take the place of the charcloth.
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BushMoot, the best event of the year - from 1st -5th August 2008 at Merthyr Mawr in South Wales. 
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.
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.
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.
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)
Well, the finings have worked – the wine is beautifully clear.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.