curious about firestarting...

[dave payne]

everybody knows about using "char cloth"...but what kind of "char" was actually used in history before "100% cotten Tee shirts" were available..I have tried making "char" out of punky wood and white cedar bark..both making an acceptable "char" but niether seemed very durable,like they might crumble during a day or two of travel.

 

[bnail]

everybody knows about using "char cloth"...but what kind of "char" was actually used in history before "100% cotton Tee shirts" were available..I have tried making "char" out of punky wood and white cedar bark..both making an acceptable "char" but neither seemed very durable,like they might crumble during a day or two of travel.

I've read that the ancients (Vikings IIRC) used a fungus/moss that was soaked in urine and then dried. I've never tried this, I just read it in passing.
for MTC, I think Folks get hung up on the "Cloth" part of Charcloth too much. Debates rage about whether or not good textiles would be burned up so needlessly. I've experimented a good bit with natural tinders and various different textiles and determined that it's kind of inconsequential. Some Euros may have used fungus (Skatagan) but for the most part, I'm betting they did just as you did, sought out fiberous alternatives to their cloth. Still, I bet they never gave up on the cloth.
and as for traveling, I've seen folks char cattail fluff by packing it into a tin and when they needed a light would just take out a pinch.

What I do is beat cedar bark into a fiber, twine it into cord and then char it, it holds better for me that way. Of course, I always have my char cloth under a piece of leather in my tin, and a few nodules of Skatagan as back up.

 

[Swampman]

Those hard fungi that grow on old trees & rotten wood make excellent char.

 

[crockett]

I'm not sure how pc any char actually is, little if anything was ever said about it. It may have been that it was such a common article that no one bothered mentioning it.
What is said, it seems, is that a tinder box was carried. Today we use this box to hold the flint, steel, maybe some shredded tinder/bark. Originally this box held something akin to char. The box was opened and the flint and steel used to send a shower of sparks into the box. Apparently something in the box caught and held the spark. A knife may have been used to remove the caught ember and place it in the bird's nest, etc to produce a flame. The tinder box was then closed and saved for the next fire.
A while back I was cutting some wood with a dull power saw that was grinding out some brown or charred saw dust. I should have swept the floor but I didn't. In any event I was later grinding a blade and a spark landed on the dust and caught. I saw it and put it out but it goes to show that a lot of material can catch a spark.
A bow and a drill sort of does the same thing. You place a large leaf under the notch in the base/fire board. After a while the drill starts grinding out some dark brown powder that is really a sort of char dust because once the ember forms it is in this dust. You could probably use a bow and drill in an emergency to produce "char" and then switch to the flint and steel to put a spark in it. When the mountain man Fitzpatrick was hiding out from the Blackfot in 1832 it is said he started a fire by rubbing two sticks together- one of the few of such references.
What was in the tinder box? I don't know but it must have been some sort of partially burnt wood, etc that would catch and hold a spark.

 

[Swampman]

I've read that it is possible to find chared materials left from old forest fires, and camp fires that will catch. I've never tried it.

 

[dave payne]

I have tried old charred wood left over from a campfire.....but chunks of charcoal don't catch the spark from flint and steel...it will catch by using a magnifying glass on a sunny day....but then it is very hard to create enough heat to catch your birdsnest afire with it

 

[jbwilliams3]

I stayed with a man in Scotland who used peet moss for fuel as wood was scarce. It also started very easily and I’m sure as mentioned above, with a little additive, would make a great substitute for char cloth.

I don’t know about linen char, but I know tow makes a fine starter. I keep some in my tinder box along with char cloth and it works very well.

 

[ameling]

Charred wood can and does work well, but varieties do work differently. And charred wood that was solid or punky also matters.

If you char punky wood (half rotted), it will usually catch a spark fairly well. But charred solid wood is harder to catch sparks with.

The same can also be said about various charred fungus. When charred, some catch a spark better than others. Some that work well are the insides of one that looks like a horse's hoof, and that flat shelf fungus off of trees. Just cut/chop up the insides, and bake it just like you would when making charclothe. And it tends to work much better than charred wood (like from a prior campfire).

Charred Fungus or charred punky wood were the most likely things stored in that "tinder box". You would open the box, and strike sparks down into your pre-charred material. When you saw that one or more sparks had "caught", you then fished one out and used it in your "birds nest" to start your fire. And you then put the tight-fitting lid back on to your tinder box - to put out any sparks still in it. This saved your charred material for future use.

The one fungus that grows mostly on Birch trees will catch a spark without any prior preparation. Called Tinder Fungus (Innonotus Obliquus). The orangish inside will catch a spark from flint/steel even fresh off of the tree. Amazing stuff.

Amadou is made by cutting out that thin velvet-like layer from the shelf mushroom. You then soak it in potassium nitrate. The Vikings did this by boiling it in strong urine - to get that potassium nitrate. When it finally dries, it acts a lot like slow-match from a match lock, or a slow version of cannon fuse. But you need to store it in an air-tight container. It will draw moisture out of the air.

Karl Koster wrote a great article about all things involved with starting a fire in and around the Great Lakes fur trade area. Check it out in the May/June 2004 issue of On The Trail Magazine Vol. 11 No. 2.

And Rex Allen Norman wrote a great article on fire starting for the Western Rocky Mountain Fur Trade areas in the July/August 2007 issue of Muzzleloader Magazine.

Also check out the Canadian Library's Northwest Journal web site for several articles on fire starting - http://www.northwestjournal.ca/

Hope this helps answer some of your questions.

Just my humble thoughts to share, and best used in conjunction with your own research.

Mikey - yee ol' grumpy German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

 

[DNICK]

Tried several things this last weekend what worked good for me was chared rotten pine (punk),and a large dark brown shelf fungus from an oak tree also chared, what didnt work well for me was chared wood left over from an old fire or a stringy moss from a pine tree tried it as gathered would not catch a spark chared it shrank to half its size and was brittle (like my wifes biscuits) but still would not catch a spark

 

[redwing]

Why don't you just use your wifes biscuits. :wink:

 

[HFD60]

Ive been using my recovered pillow ticking patches, they make great char :thumbsup:

 

[dave payne]

would your wifes biscuits work as char as is or would it take just a little more heat to turn them a nice charcoal color??

 

[DNICK]

they usualy have had plenty of heat to properly char them. the fungus form the oak tree after charing is almost imposable to put out im going to gather more as I find it.

 

[adkmountainken]

i have tried and tried using the tinder fungus from birch trees and it is very hard to hold a piece and catch a spark on it. if yopu touch it quickly with a match it does indeed hold a spark and holds it for a long time which would make it much more durable and last longer then char cloth if one can catch a spark on it. i will make a short video this weekend of flint and steel and will also try to catch a spark with the tinder fungus.

 

[ameling]

Using tinder fungus instead of charclothe does take a bit of adjusting in your fire starting technique.

Some people have a container with little chunks of the fungus in it, and strike sparks down into them. When one chatches, they then pick that chunk out to use starting their fire.

I take a small piece around the size of a peanut, and hold/pinch it with my thumb on top of my flint - kind of like I do with my charclothe. I then strike my sparks trying to get them to land on the tinder fungus. It does take longer for a spark to catch. From my experience, anywhere from twice as long on up to 8 or 10 times as long. So it does take a little longer to catch that initial spark.

And once you have caught that spark, you also need to adjust how you use it in your bird's nest tinder bundle. The "heat" it generates does last longer than in a piece of charclothe, With charclothe, the spark quickly spreads throughout the whole piece (as you gently blow on it). This greatly increases the "heat" involved, and available to transfer over into your tinder bundle to get it hot enough to start burning. With the tinder fungus, your "heat" is far more concentrated, but longer lasting. So transferring that "heat" to the rest of your tinder bundle can be not as concentrated. So you can "burn out" the tinder right next to it without getting the rest hot enough to catch fire. I often put an extra chunk of regular fungus (or even some charred wood) in my tinder bundle right next to the spark I caught in the tinder fungus. This then picks up that spark and extends it and increases the total "heat" as it also starts to glow. This all helps then generate enough total heat to get your bird's nest burning.

A good way to practice this would be to build your bird's nest, and then fish out a small ember from your campfire. Put that into your bird's nest, and then try to start it burning. That way you see the difference in using a smaller level of "heat" over a longer time frame as compared to using charclothe. It is different, and you need to adjust your technique, and also how you might build your bird's nest tinder bundle.

And it all takes practice. Practice catching that initial spark, and practice converting it into flame in your bird's nest tinder bundle.

I hope these humble thoughts help.

Mikey - yee ol' grumpy German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

p.s. Who tried around a dozen times to catch that first spark in tinder fungus before I worked out a method that would work for me. Frustrating, but I worked through it. Now it is far easier. The big point is that tinder fungus (innonotus obliquus) will catch that spark as-is, without any prior preparation, and even fresh off of the tree. In my experience, the fresh tends to catch that spark a little better/faster than the stuff that has dried a bunch.

 

[djnye]

mike, thanks for the thoughts on skatagan(tinder fungus). it does perform differently than charcloth, but with practice one can get a spark to take in one to several strikes. i have found that it takes a very little 'flip' of the wrist to do it and have much more control over where the spark lands. i have also found that there is no need to hurry once the spark has caught and i very much like the relaxed pace. i also never blow the nest, but either fan or wave the nest to supply air movement.

there are large differences in the fungus that need to be taken into account in order that it performs well. any old fungus of the propeer variety will not work very well. first, it needs to come from live trees. skatagan is a sterile conck that causes a fissure in the birchbark to allow moisture to enter and feed the mycillium inside. it is 100% fatal to the tree, but takes several years to kill the tree. if the fungus is taken from a dead tree it is too old to be of much value (though i have been able to use a bowdrill or even a single spindle placed directly into the large conck and generate enough heat to produce a coal). in edition to the fungus coming from a still live tree, one alsoo needs to find the best from the interior of the fungus. some of the outer parts will be quite dry and hard. other more toward the core and tree itself will be soft, light, and very spongy. that is the stuff you want. there is a lot of inferior fungus in the woods but once you find a fresh one that has this central soft area it will be worth your searching. i have pieces of skatagan that are more than 5 years old that still are soft and work wonderfully.


on the whole, i find skatagan more user-fiendly than charcloth due to its durability and ease of preparation and use.

been lacing shoes this morning and using my new awl. thanks mike for the very nice tool and thaks also for the steel that is now part of my favorite firepouch.

take care, daniel

 

[huntertrapper]

cotton was amongst the mtn men and longhunters. shirts, pants,and i wouldnt doubt when holey and ripped and ruined theyd use the shirt for something,possibly charred cloth