This morning I made a new batch of char cloth. I showed somebody else how to do it earlier in the year, and I gave them my on-hand supply to get them going.


^ Implements. Roughly clockwise from upper-left:
* Handle of Dogfather CG, used to split up the fire wood.
* Ye Olde Five Gallon bucket with water to put out the fire once done with it ("Never start a fire without knowing how you're going to put it out").
* Split firewood, pine in this case, and slightly damper than I'd like.
* Cutting tool, Fallkniven H1/3G
* Bow drill, with related items
* Scrap of birch bark with fine tinder
* A wad of coarse tinder
* A tin full of cloth squares


^ Fine tinder. A mix of cattail fluff and "white rot". Sometimes when you're out walking you'll find a tree that's sort of soft and falling apart, but still white or yellowish. Dig some of that stuff off and save it. "Brown rot", which makes the wood brown, brittle and cracks it up like charred logs is also useful. You can crumble it to a dust and use it to keep an ember smoldering while you work on your tinder. And birch bark of course has well known flammability.


^ Coarser tinder. Dried cattail leaves (no sense wasting the plant), shredded bark, and an odd scrap of linen.


^ Tin filled with fabric squares. Note the tiny hole punched in the top of the tin, you can do this with a nail or awl. Use cotton or linen, and cut it into squares of around 1 or 2 inches. Smaller is too awkward to handle, bigger is a waste of material. Squares should be piled somewhat loosely, not crushed tightly into the tin.



^ ... Yeah, I'm not really sure why you care about this. Wood, yay?


^ I fail miserably at making a traditional "teepee" style fire, they just keep collapsing. So this is my mutated variant.


^ Unfortunately I can't make fire and run a camera at the same time... Once I stop blowing on the tinder it stops glowing, so it looks like nothing is going on here. Grrr.


^ We have ignition. As I noted above, the wood is a little damp and wasn't going so nicely, so....


^ Toss on some kind of dessicated weedy stuff and some wood shavings. Now we're cooking with gas! In a way of speaking.


^ Once things settle down, I introduce the tin full of cloth. Notice the tiny flame on top of the tin as the exhaust gasses burn. When you stop getting smoke or flame out of the top of the tin, remove it promptly or you will overcook your char cloth!

[img]http://momaw.kikaimegami.com/fire11.jpg[/img]
^ Camera blew out the brightness here because the inside of the tin is incredibly black. Your char cloth should be a rich black but still flexible. If it comes out brown, you didn't cook it long enough. If it comes out brittle and crumbles to dust when you handle it, you cooked it too long.

[img]http://momaw.kikaimegami.com/fire12.jpg[/img]
^ Flint and steel. Actually jasper and steel, but functionally the same thing. A friend of mine made this striker for me out of an old file. If you don't know any blacksmiths, just a piece of file snapped into pieces with a bench vise and a hammer will work fine.

[img]http://momaw.kikaimegami.com/fire13.jpg[/img]
^ Char cloth positioned on the flake of stone, and...

[img]http://momaw.kikaimegami.com/fire14.jpg[/img]
^ A lively ember with a minimum of fuss and effort expended.

Overall flint and steel is MUCH quicker and easier than using the bow drill, and involves a let less mass and volume in terms of tools. But the thing is, there is very little in the natural world that will catch a spark off flint and steel, hence, the char cloth. Which involves preparation work and irreplaceable tools. The bow drill can be made out of nothing but what you find naturally, and as such is a "purer" survival skill.

very cool thread momaw.

you seem to know a lot about firemaking.
I've always wanted to make char cloth, but it seems kind of pointless, since now we have ferro rods.

I'm gonna go work on my bow drill for a while now!
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

very cool thread, good job and very informative <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> I need to work on my fire skills

Great Thread Momaw!! Very informative. Now you get a few of these <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />.

I love your steel. How much pressure do you put on the flint?

Really cool Momaw.
I really have to do a lot of practice.
So far, I've only been able to get a fire going using
(1) firesteel and cotton balls coated with vaseline, and
(2) firesteel and resinwood.
Still need lots of practice.

Cheers
DotD

Pressure?

When you use flint and steel you strike them together at speed, unlike ferrocerium rods where you can just scrape. Some people prefer to move the stone, I prefer to move the steel, since the stone is razor-edged and I can envision bad cuts if I miss. You don't need a lot of impact force if you have significant impact speed. Remember that your goal here is to cut a piece of steel off against the stone, and the heat of that cutting is what ignites the shaving of metal. The smaller the piece of metal and the faster it's removed, the hotter your spark will be, so ideally you want to strike very quickly and very lightly. Anyway, hitting the stone too hard will chip it and damage the edge... a good sharp piece of stone will light dozens of fires if used gently.

I'm not really sure how to quantify the technique, it's very hands-on and muscular memory. Fast and gentle. Break an old file, round off the side, and whack it against a shard of broken quartz. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> You'll quickly get a feel for what works. Youtube has lots of videos of striking if you need a visual.

Don't know how I let this post slip by, great post Momaw. I gotta get going and start practicing some flint & steel techniques. I was thinking of getting a blast match from Supply Captain and also one of the wet tinder cubes.

Great post Brother! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Very good tutorial, Momaw!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for sharing!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />