I’ve been having more fun than a kid with a new chemistry set, blowing up stuff right and left.
On a recent turkey hunt I found a big bunch of giant puffballs, Calvatia gigantea, an excellent edible fungus. I processed it all for freezing, looking forward to a lot of delicious dishes. Then, a couple of days later, I had an interesting thought. I had seen a description of the puffball being used for making fire with flint and steel by the Hidatsa Indians. It was described in the papers of anthropologist Gilbert L. Wilson. as told to him by Buffalo Bird Woman and her son, Wolf-chief. As Wolf-chief said, “The puff ball was gathered ripe, dried, rubbed with wet gunpowder and dried. It caught fire easily and was applied to a handful of dry grass.” Buffalo Bird Woman said, “He cut out a thin slice about as big as the two joints of my first three fingers and thick as a piece of blanket cloth. One side he rubbed well with gun powder, wetted.” and “To make a fire, my father took a little dried grass in his left hand, laid on it the little slab of puff ball with powder side up, and the flint on that held tight by his thumb. The sparks were struck downward on the puff ball slice which caught with a swi-I-I-sh, and he folded the grass over the burning bit of puff and shook it and waved it to right and left as he held it in both hands till the grass caught fire. As I remember, Small-ankle did not strike the spark upon one whole puff ball, but carried in his fire bag a number of these powder prepared bits of puff ball”¦”
Here was an opportunity to run a fun experiment. I had a lot of puffball, although I didn’t know if it was the same species the Hidatsa used, or if it was collected at the same stage of maturity, and I had the curiosity. I couldn’t resist. I sacrificed a slab of puffball, sliced some of it “thick as a piece of blanket cloth”, some thicker, and dried it overnight in my dehydrator.
I mixed some 2F Goex with water to make a wet paste and used a Q-tip to paint it onto one side of a slice, then added more water to make it a very wet soup and painted another.
I dried that again, then tried it. To keep things simple I just used the lock on my flintlock pistol, put a piece of the painted puffball BP side up in the pan and tripped the lock. Amazingly, about the second try the BP caught with a visible swi-I-I-sh, just as she said, and burned all the coating of BP. I repeated with 4 pieces, two each of the thick and thin paint, and 3 of them caught from that flash and smoldered just like a good charcloth.
I then lit some of it with a match and was surprised to see it go flying several inches with a whoosh when it ignited, The lady knew whereof she spoketh.
There have been many discussions about how much BP is damaged by getting wet, so I decided to run a second experiment. I put the BP soup in the dehydrator and left it until it was totally dry, in a solid cake stuck to my little tin pan. I scraped and chipped it off, put it into a marble mortar and pestle and ground it into a fine powder. I put that on some paper and very carefully lit the paper. Whoosh! It flashed in what seemed a perfectly normal way. If your powder gets wet, don’t throw it away.
Once I got started I couldn’t stop, so I did a third experiment. I have read recipes for making ”˜touchpaper’ like this one by Mrs. Sarah Harrison, of Devonshire, in 1760, “The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book, and Compleat Family Cook:... To make Tinder. Take three Ounces of Salt-petre, put it to a Pint and a half of fair Water, set it on a Fire in a Kettle or Pan to heat till the Salt-petre be dissolved; then take a Quire of smooth brown Paper, and put them in Sheet by Sheet into the hot Water till they are wet through, and then lay them on a clean Floor or Grass to dry. You may at any Time tear a Piece off, and put it in your Tinder box; it will catch like Wild fire.”
I wondered if puffball would work as the paper did. I made a saturated solution and soaked a couple of slices for an hour until they were wet through, then dried them completely. I tried several ways to get it to catch a spark, never succeeded in that, but when lit with a match it smoldered slowly like char cloth, but constantly sparkled like kid’s sparklers on the 4th.
The old folks had things to teach us, but we have to listen. It’s an ego-bruising fact that they knew a lot which we don’t, and never will. Fun trying to figure it out, though. :grin:
Spence
On a recent turkey hunt I found a big bunch of giant puffballs, Calvatia gigantea, an excellent edible fungus. I processed it all for freezing, looking forward to a lot of delicious dishes. Then, a couple of days later, I had an interesting thought. I had seen a description of the puffball being used for making fire with flint and steel by the Hidatsa Indians. It was described in the papers of anthropologist Gilbert L. Wilson. as told to him by Buffalo Bird Woman and her son, Wolf-chief. As Wolf-chief said, “The puff ball was gathered ripe, dried, rubbed with wet gunpowder and dried. It caught fire easily and was applied to a handful of dry grass.” Buffalo Bird Woman said, “He cut out a thin slice about as big as the two joints of my first three fingers and thick as a piece of blanket cloth. One side he rubbed well with gun powder, wetted.” and “To make a fire, my father took a little dried grass in his left hand, laid on it the little slab of puff ball with powder side up, and the flint on that held tight by his thumb. The sparks were struck downward on the puff ball slice which caught with a swi-I-I-sh, and he folded the grass over the burning bit of puff and shook it and waved it to right and left as he held it in both hands till the grass caught fire. As I remember, Small-ankle did not strike the spark upon one whole puff ball, but carried in his fire bag a number of these powder prepared bits of puff ball”¦”
Here was an opportunity to run a fun experiment. I had a lot of puffball, although I didn’t know if it was the same species the Hidatsa used, or if it was collected at the same stage of maturity, and I had the curiosity. I couldn’t resist. I sacrificed a slab of puffball, sliced some of it “thick as a piece of blanket cloth”, some thicker, and dried it overnight in my dehydrator.
I mixed some 2F Goex with water to make a wet paste and used a Q-tip to paint it onto one side of a slice, then added more water to make it a very wet soup and painted another.
I dried that again, then tried it. To keep things simple I just used the lock on my flintlock pistol, put a piece of the painted puffball BP side up in the pan and tripped the lock. Amazingly, about the second try the BP caught with a visible swi-I-I-sh, just as she said, and burned all the coating of BP. I repeated with 4 pieces, two each of the thick and thin paint, and 3 of them caught from that flash and smoldered just like a good charcloth.
I then lit some of it with a match and was surprised to see it go flying several inches with a whoosh when it ignited, The lady knew whereof she spoketh.
There have been many discussions about how much BP is damaged by getting wet, so I decided to run a second experiment. I put the BP soup in the dehydrator and left it until it was totally dry, in a solid cake stuck to my little tin pan. I scraped and chipped it off, put it into a marble mortar and pestle and ground it into a fine powder. I put that on some paper and very carefully lit the paper. Whoosh! It flashed in what seemed a perfectly normal way. If your powder gets wet, don’t throw it away.
Once I got started I couldn’t stop, so I did a third experiment. I have read recipes for making ”˜touchpaper’ like this one by Mrs. Sarah Harrison, of Devonshire, in 1760, “The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book, and Compleat Family Cook:... To make Tinder. Take three Ounces of Salt-petre, put it to a Pint and a half of fair Water, set it on a Fire in a Kettle or Pan to heat till the Salt-petre be dissolved; then take a Quire of smooth brown Paper, and put them in Sheet by Sheet into the hot Water till they are wet through, and then lay them on a clean Floor or Grass to dry. You may at any Time tear a Piece off, and put it in your Tinder box; it will catch like Wild fire.”
I wondered if puffball would work as the paper did. I made a saturated solution and soaked a couple of slices for an hour until they were wet through, then dried them completely. I tried several ways to get it to catch a spark, never succeeded in that, but when lit with a match it smoldered slowly like char cloth, but constantly sparkled like kid’s sparklers on the 4th.
The old folks had things to teach us, but we have to listen. It’s an ego-bruising fact that they knew a lot which we don’t, and never will. Fun trying to figure it out, though. :grin:
Spence
