Longhunter fire-steel

[ameling]

Hi, Paul.

Sorry to disagree with you about making charclothe, but I must correct something you stated. There is no "steam" in your cotton clothe that you are seeing coming out of your tin as you "cook" your cotton clothe. It is actually real Smoke - pretty similar to what comes out of a cigar or campfire. Any moisture is incidental.

What you are trying to do when making charclothe, is to burn off part of the cotton material in an environment starved for oxygen. This forces those "volatile gasses" out of the material, partially burns it, and leaves you with almost pure carbon. Everything other than the carbon in your cotton clothe must be burned or cooked away to leave you with good charclothe. Your clothe will lose weight and volume during this process - part of the price you pay to make it. But you end up with just the carbon that was in the original clothe.

The white "smoke" coming out of your tin is just that - smoke. It can and will burn. Burning it does not affect anything inside your tin. After that smoke stops coming out of your tin and you take it out of the fire, the whole contents inside are actually glowing red - burning. If you opened it up immediately, you would see it all glowing red, just like after you catch a spark in your finished charclothe - and it would continue to burn completely up. That's why you let it cool completely before opening up your tin. That cooling time extinquishes the burning inside your tin.

You do the same thing when you have a wood campfire. At first, the wood burns with lots of smoke and flame - those volatile gasses. Then it burns down to coals. Those coals are almost pure carbon - with all the "volatile gasses" burned/cooked off. And the volume and weight of your wood has been greatly reduced. If you put out those coals, and dry them, you end up with Lump Charcoal. When you burn it, it will burn with almost no smoke, just heat. And it will start very quickly. That's what you get when you buy Lump Charcoal at the store - it's just fully charred wood. Charcoal Briquettes are made from that lump charcoal which is ground up, mixed with clay and glue and starter fluids, and pressed into those little briquettes.

A friend used to make charclothe without a tin. He would take a long strip of cotton clothe, and roll it up around a small stick. He then would start that roll burning - like a torch. When it was going well, and the outsides were pretty well charred/blackened, he'd then bury it in sand/dirt - to snuff out the fire. When it was fully cooled/out, he'd dig it back up, cut the extra stick off, and put it in his fire starting pouch. To use it, he would unroll a couple inches of charred clothe and tear it off - to use with his flint and steel. After a few times unrolling it, the clothe would start to be less black/burned - lots more brown. He'd just burn and bury it again. You waste a little bit more clothe making your charclothe this way, but you don't have to use a tin to make it.

So it goes.

yhs
Mike

 

[ameling]

Some places to look for information on starting a fire with flint and steel are:

www.northwestjournal.ca - The Canadian Library's fur trade quarterly, but now online. They have several articles on fire starting.

www.historicaltrekking.com - the Historical Trekking forum. They have several articles on fire starting on their Trail Tips link/page.

Wilderness Way magazine - they have a past article or two from the magazine on their web site.

Society for Primitive Technology - they also have several articles from past quarterly magazine/newsletters on their web site.

www.vikinganswerlady.com - she has a large web site on the Vikings, including fire steels and fire starting - with several drawings of holding/using your flint and steel.

Be careful using obsidian. It is volcanic glass, and very brittle. And those little chips/flakes are extremely sharp. A few hits from your striker and you will have lots of little flakes all over the place. Use true flint when you can find it - like the English black, French amber, etc. I use Musket Flints all the time with my striker.

You should not have to BANG your flint and steel together to get good sparks. Lightly "ticking" them should give you all the sparks you need - provided you have a sharp edge on your flint and a properly made and heat-treated striker.

I prefer to hold my charclothe or tinder fungus on my flint, and swing my striker against the flint to get my sparks. I also use the "pinch" grip. When I first learned, I used a classic C shaped striker, and got numerous bloody knuckles. So I learned to pinch my striker between my thumb and fingers. This method has less exposure of my knuckles to those sharp edges on the flint. And it helped me learn control in my swing.

I hope these humble thoughts help.

yhs
Mike

 

[paulvallandigham]

I suspect our disgreement has more to do with choice and use of words, ( semantics) than actual facts.

The purpose of the closed container is to deprive the cloth of oxygen while heating it above its flash point( temperature at which will burn in the presence of oxygen.) Because burning requires the presence of oxygen, I do not use that term to describe what is going on inside the can, as you do. The cloth is not burning, it is being chemically altered by being heated above its flash point in the absense of oxygen. Since cotton is a hydrocarbon, the heat has to remove the hydrogen and oxygen present, to reduce the cotton cloth to carbon. The hydrogen and oxygen combine easily in the presence of each other to form water, and it is this water that is the " smoke " you are describing, and not the reverse. No doubt there is dirt, pollen, windblown dust, etc. on the surface of the cotton cloth that produces smoke as it burns, and this smoke is combined with the steam to create the the white smoke we see slowly rising out of the can. I guess the only fact we differ about is the significance of fire appearing on the top of that hole in the can. I have found, by visual examination, that if air is allowed to get into the can while it continues to be heated, it will burn the cloth to a white ash, and it will be useless for starting fires. If you regulate the heat of the can so that smoke goes out, but no fire is allowed to be lit, and no air is allowed to sneak back into the can through that hole, you get charred cloth through and through. The cloth appears to be opaque, but consists of thin threads of carbon, rather than cotton. The charred cloth cannot obsorb water easily, or retain it, but burns quickly in the presence of a spark.

I have cooked charred cloth probably a dozen times, or more, doing several cans full on one weekend alone, demonstrating the process to the public. I have not tried the stick approach, and think it would result in little charred cloth for the effort involved. I sense you would be constantly relighting the cotton strips on the stick to get more layers to " cook " through and through. I learned these skills from some of the most laid back men I have ever known. If there was a simpler way of doing something, that is the way they would do it. To date, cooking cotton cloth in a closed can with a small hole is the way they go, and not using a stick to make a torch. I am happy to have the information, MIKE, and I will make a note to try it when I am around a campfire, and some sand. Paul

 

[ameling]

My apologies, Paul. Yes, part of it is terminology. But the rest is my error. I keep forgetting about that chemically attached water that is in many materials. Never was any good in chem class in school. And working with steel, iron, iron ore, and limestone, I should know better.

On the stick method of making charclothe, yes you do use up the charred layers fast, and have to re-burn it. That's just one of the prices you have to pay to use this method. It's main advantage is not having to use a tin container - just clothe, a stick, and your campfire.

My friend learned this method in his quest to not carry a tin for charring clothe. He could not find any references to document one for making charclothe until well into the mid 1800's. He also found the same thing when searching for documentation on charclothe itself - not until the mid 1800's. He did find references to other things - spunk, punk, amadou, tinder fungus, tinger conch, down from birds legs, and charred wood. So now he doesn't use charclothe anymore. He now uses tinder conch - a specific fungus that grows on birch trees. Of course, his main area of research is the Great Lakes Fur Trade area.

Anyway, sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm now starting to have flash-backs to Chem class in school. Must be time for some 12 oz. therapy.

yhs
Mike

 

[Tamora Rademacher]

Great job on describing the char cloth making process. When my husband and I make it down at the fire pit (with a few beverages), we always take a twig and stick it in the vent hole when we taqke it off the fire to cool. It holds the heat in and keeps the moisture from coming back into the old stain can that we use. The small amount of heat that is held back in can sometimes turn a brown piece of cloth black!

We just did a class "How to" project with my 5th grade son. A report, samples of the materials needed and pictures of how to make a fire without matches. He got a 100 on the project and a 100 on the report.

Here is his report (kinda simplifies the process!):

How to make a fire with flint and steel

By: Jeremiah Rademacher

To make a fire, you make a bird’s nest with tow. Tow is a plant fiber that is pulled apart until it is stringy. You put the char cloth in the tow. Char cloth is burnt cotton. Then you strike the flint against the steel. When you get a spark from the flint and steel on the char cloth, you blow on the cloth until the tow flames up. When the tow flames up, then you put it under the kindling and your fire is started. I learned how to find the right kind of firewood, how to make a fire without matches, how to dig a fire pit and how to be safe around a fire.

 

[DrTimboone]

Thanks everyone!! that is helpful! :hatsoff:

Roy, I do neeed to get up to the mountains ..... just busy right now with work and knee surgery and trying to get my new fowler built.

Perhaps we can set something up.y wife has not been too intereted in this stuff although she admires my gun making and horn making and does like the venison backstraps!! Took her to Martin's Station a caouple of weekends ago for the raid. She really enjoyed Wallace Gusler and Eve Otmar's lecture and meeting many of the reenactors as welll as seeing the two raids conducted. Couldn't get her to have her picture taken with one of the Cherokees though!! So she actually is a little more interested tahn before. Got to get her to shoot my .54 and then she just might get hooked!!

Anyway, being able to start a fire with flint and steel will assure her she won't have to freeze in the winter!!

 

[paulvallandigham]

Mike if I were going to woods walk, as a re-enactor, I would also carry tinder fungus and probably some birch bark for tinder to catch my flames. Charred cloth is fine, but if it gets wet is is basically useless. Tinder fungus can be shaken out, and it catches sparks just fine.

We lost much of the knowledge of the wood culture that preceded the Industrial Revolution, largely because knowledge about what woods to use, how to find tinder, what made good tinder , and where to find dry wood even in a rain storm, just was never written down in books. You learned this from your parents from the moment you were strong enough and fast enough to keep up with older brothers or sisters, or your parents, as they gathered sticks and tinder for daily use.

Now, we are several generations removed, and people pay big money to relearn these old skills. The same goes for fire starting using bow and drill, handdrills, fire saws, fire troughs, percussion methods using only rocks, and fire starting using refraction( lens), reflection( parabolic reflectors) , and compression.( fire piston).

 

[ameling]

Yes, so much "common knowledge" has been lost over time because it was not worth recording.

One example would be Cutting Firewood for you cabin or home. People today seldom realize how much firewood you would use during a year - for cooking and heating. There are household accounts from early New England that list the amount of wood purchased for the year. Lots of houses with two or three fireplaces used 40 to 60 cords of wood a year! A one room cabin with its single fireplace could easily use 20 cords of wood a year. If the owner kept a daily diary and wrote down everything they did during the day, cutting/splitting firewood would have been listed on most every day - for the daily cooking, but also to build up the pile for winter. But that's all pretty boring, and most people didn't think it was worth recording. So we have to guess how often they did it, and how they went about doing it.

Here's a pic of two new fire steels I played around making yesterday. They are Roman 1st to 3rd century. A little early time period for most of us, but a fun little project. Of course, I also made a few other things yesterday - 4 large Copper Culture socketed spear heads, and 4 other fire steels.

yhs
Mike Ameling

 

[Butch Speer]

Paul,
Have a question about the steam. I've made char a few times. Always encouraged the smoke/steam to burn, no special reason but, it's always came out like it should. My question is, if that is steam, how would it burn? Thanks for the info.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Steam doesn't burn. But as you heat the cloth to above its flashpoint, and deprive it of oxygen, it changes from its multifaceted chemical make up to just carbon fibers, and in the process gives off combustible gases in the form of hydro-carbons, including Hydrogen gas. What else depends on the fabric or fibers chosen, whether " sizing " is added, or some other chemical to the cotton to make it stay flat, or " Wrinkle-free ", etc. That is the source of the gases that burn. All that is drawn out of the can through that small hole with the moisture that is " steam ". Since steam is merely droplets of water heated above the boiling point of water( 212 degrees farenheit, or 100 degrees celcius, a fairly low temperature- certainly far below the 451 degree flash point temperature of wood-The steam acts as a carrier for other gases, since it moves first and fastest.

Please accept my apology for being so inarticulate about what " burns ". I forget that not everyone paid attention in general science class in H.S., and has not thought about what makes fire, as I have, after nearly breaking my arms trying to start a fire with a bow and drill when I was a kid. I am sure there are many other things that were taught to me in science classes that I forgot almost instantaneously, because they did not hold any practical use to me when I was sitting in the classroom. I was only 8 when I wore myself out, failing to make fire. By age 14 I was listening to anyone who said anything that would help me conquer that problem.