If you ever want to make char cloth yourself, it's really easy and you can make huge stockpiles of the stuff quickly.
You will need:
- fire
- a fire-proof steel (
not aluminum, not tin) container which seals reasonably tightly
- a screwdriver, nail, awl, or similar tool
- cloth of cotton or linen. Do not use synthetics or synthetic blends. Some people swear by old bath towels, but I've not had any problems with old T-shirts, or even new fabric
1.) Cut your cloth into squares. The bigger the piece, the longer it burns, but the more wasteful it becomes. Between 1 inch and 2 inches square should be fine.
2.) Take your steel container and punch a small hole in the top of it. It only needs to be 1/8th of an inch or so.
3.) Stuff the cloth into the container.
Do not pack tightly. Just toss it in casually until the container is full. Put the lid on.
4.) Build your fire. Once you start to see coals and your fire is really starting to generate some heat, put the container into the fire. Try to pile coals around it so that is being heated from all sides.
5.) After a while, you will see smoke escaping from the vent hole in the container. It will get progressively more nasty until eventually the gasses discharging from the vent hole will ignite. Once this flame goes
out, promptly remove the container from the heat and let it cool.
6.) When the container is cool enough to handle with your bare hands, you can open it. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Char cloth should be a rich pure black, but it should still be cloth. That is it should be flexible. If you end up with something so brittle that it crumbles when you touch it, or if there is just a cup full of char in the bottom of the container, you cooked the cloth too long. Start over.
If the cloth is not black, but dark brown, and does not catch a spark easily, you didn't cook it long enough. You can throw it back on the fire.
If the cloth is black in places but has brown spots, it didn't cook thoroughly. This could be because you packed too much cloth in (there needs to be air space for the heat to get in and the exhaust gasses to get out), because the container was not heated evenly (remember to bank the coals up a bit), or your container is just too big.
