Stone Oil/Fat Lamp With Fungal (Red-Belted Conk) Wick

Using a thin stick to separate the coal from the confines of the hearthboard, while cradling the coal on the thin piece of bark, Jeff transfers the ember to the nest. Blowing gently on this tinder bundle, the coal engulfs the fuels and produces flame in just a few seconds. A spark was planted inside me at that very moment.

Bow drill fire-making tinder is but one primitive use of polypores. Recently I’ve focused my efforts on a variety of fire-making ways, from flint and steel (spark-based) to fire plow (lateral friction--as Tom Hanks demonstrated in the movie Castaway) to bow drill and hand drill (rotational friction), among others. Having experimented with a few thousand combinations of woods available here and the central coast section of California (my former residence), I find myself yearning to include lesser-tried natural materials--which brings me to the pyro-properties of polypores. The most common sizeable conks around here are red-belted conk (Fomitopsis pinicola), hemlock varnished conk (Ganoderma tsugae), and artist’s conk (Ganoderma applanatum), of which all are currently (August) blossoming in a burgeoning bouquet of baby buttons on stumps and downed logs. Also, i was sent some birch polypore (Piptoporus betulina) and tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius) from Ohio to experiment with.