Be honest, what will a spark net you?

TwinBlade

TwinBlade

Joined
Aug 1, 2008
Messages
491
I gotta say, I have read, on this forum and abroad, all sorts of recommendations for tinder and firestarting media and find a lot of it to be a bit over the top. Now, I know a lot of you folks and think very highly of many of you. My post should not be taken as "snobbish" but rather as a skill builder.

Let's be real. If you can catch a spark of any kind, you don't need dryer fuzz or cotton balls soaked in some thing or another. Matter of fact, if you want to be a purist, let's substitute char cloth for charred cottonwood bark. How many mountain men could actually afford cloth of any kind, much less have to rely on roasting it to a crisp after he spent his last bit on it, and I can tell you that petroleum jelly sure wasn't a glimmer to them. If you need petroleum cotton balls and dryer lint, it means you ain't diggin' hard enough or your spine is rounded and dull without a good sharp firestarting corner on it.

I guess, and as I stated, I do not want to come off snobbish here, but when it comes to bushcraft and firestarting skills, lint is a bit pussified IMO. If you know how to spark a firesteel, you can get fatwood shavings lit that are produced from a relatively sharp knife, with relative ease like this...

Opinions from you folks on this?

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I agree with what your saying. However I don't have fatwood where I live, but we have paperbark which is like birch bark I think, just without the oil, but you crumble it up and then hit it with a spark and it will light up good. Saw SouthernCross do a video on it, went out and tried it and it worked good.

And you don't even need a knife to get the paperbark of the tree, it rips off quite easily.

I like to experiment with wax and cotton balls and all that stuff, because where I live, there isn't a lot of natural tinder I can play with, pretty much only paperbark.

But if I had fatwood and birch bark I'd definitely practice with those methods rather than artificial tinder.
 
Things like PJ or waxed cotton balls are good fare for a survival kit. They'll take a poor quality spark in poor weather and keep a flame for several minutes if you can't find any good dry small wood to light. Realistically, you should be able to find alternatives wherever, but in a real survival situation, if good tinder is hard to find you shouldn't waste the calories finding it, possibly risking injury.

Everyone with fatwood is lucky. I haven't seen any around here, though I have alternatives. if you scrape birch bark into fluff, it'll take a spark. So will fluffed red cedar bark. I scraped a bunch of fibrous naturally retted inner bark from a black locust today, which I'm sure would take a spark when dry. With some difficulty, dry tinder fungus will take a spark- but it will hold it extremely well once it catches.
 
Hell, you can get a flame with shavings of almost any dry wood as long as your shavings are fine enough... I think we should all know how to get fire with natural materials. I also think everyone should learn friction fire methods. But lets face it; If I went back in to time and gave them old mountain men a nice bic lighter and container of PJCB's, I would be 1 popular SOB.... :D
 
agree...it doesn't take much effort to stash fatwood (plenty of online stores sell lbs worth of fatwood for cheap and if used accordingly should last for years!) and firesteel in the rig. i bought 10 lbs worth of fatwood a few months ago for ~25 shipped. it should last me years if i only use it to get a spark going. but if you want to split "pussyfied" hair, some will say friction fire is where it's at.
 
I agree also. I disagree also. Natural tinder is good to use when I'm playing around, or practicing my skills. I also use it over most other tinders when I'm out and about camping or hiking, or just showing off for my friends. I disagree when it comes to a tough situation. Note how I don't say survival. In a tough situation, I'm using a Bic. I almost always have one or two with me. I also carry a firesteel and a flint and steel setup a friend made for me. Flint and steel are my favorites by far, and the most fun. Would I use a flint and steel in a tough situation? Yes. Would I choose it over a Bic, in a tough situation. No. I like knowing how to find and use natural tinder. I mainly do it for fun. I practice firecraft so that way I will know what I need to do IF thats all I have. I let my daughters use CB's cause they are learning. I like using dryer lint, 'cause, what the hell else is it good for? Its a "recycling" thing. Can I use natural tinder? Yes. Do I have to use "unnatural" tinder? No. I like to think its, Whatever I'm in the mood for. Honestly, the last time I was caught in a bad situation, I used a road flare to start a fire, it was fast and easy, and I was drying off sooner than if I went searching for the material I need.

I don't think your post was snobbish either, I think it brings to light a unique aspect to firecraft. Did mountain men have charcloth? Yep, they also used cloth as wadding for their muskets also. Paper was harder to come by than textiled cotton cloth. Most mountain folk had looms in their houses, and made their own cloth. Or had a relative or neighbor that could.

Oh, I really enjoyed your vid on the flint and steel. Its good work, and a cool method of firecraft. A good friend of mine made me a flint and steel kit about a year ago. It took me a while to figure it out, but it is by far, my favorite way to go with firecraft. Second is the bowdrill. I like the idea of if I have a knife and some knowledge, I got fire. No firesteel, no flint, just a knife.

Be cool brother. Moose
 
firesteels are more modern than a bic lighter, a bit pussified, even. :D a real purist would use flint or friction... or chase lightning bolts, right? i use natural tinder sometimes. i also use alcohol swabs, dryer lint, firesteels, and matches.

i'm nowhere near as good with primitive fire as i'd like, but i'm learning. if lint helps me catch an ember from a bowdrill, i'll go with it. damp juniper bark is easer to catch flame from firesteel than damp dryer lint, though.
 
moosez45 said:
I don't think your post was snobbish either, I think it brings to light a unique aspect to firecraft. Did mountain men have charcloth? Yep, they also used cloth as wadding for their muskets also. Paper was harder to come by than textiled cotton cloth. Most mountain folk had looms in their houses, and made their own cloth. Or had a relative or neighbor that could.

Oh, I really enjoyed your vid on the flint and steel. Its good work, and a cool method of firecraft. A good friend of mine made me a flint and steel kit about a year ago. It took me a while to figure it out, but it is by far, my favorite way to go with firecraft. Second is the bowdrill. I like the idea of if I have a knife and some knowledge, I got fire. No firesteel, no flint, just a knife.

Be cool brother. Moose
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I did not know that regarding mountain men. Given the price of cloth and the equipment needed to make it, I would have assumed it to be a moot point for them to attempt harnessing fibers and cloth, much less making anything out of it. Very cool.

I like to put that vid up from time to time, not for advertisement, but for skills. I initially made it to advertise that kit, but several aspects of that video I do not promote anymore.

I really need to make another one without all the hype, advertising and excess talk.
 
tonym said:
Hell, you can get a flame with shavings of almost any dry wood as long as your shavings are fine enough... I think we should all know how to get fire with natural materials. I also think everyone should learn friction fire methods. But lets face it; If I went back in to time and gave them old mountain men a nice bic lighter and container of PJCB's, I would be 1 popular SOB.... :D
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I agree emphatically with all of this, including the lighter part. :D:D
 
Fatwood is my first choice, and I don't have any trouble lighting it.

BY the way, you don't need a relatiely sharp knife, and you don't need to make shavings. Scrapings are even easier to light, and you can make them easily with the spine of a knife, or even with a rock. They're faster and easier, too.
 
Twin Blade, I get what your saying but in terms of economic effect and reliability I suggest that you look into...

mini-Bic.134-599x356.jpg


Fatwood shmatwood, gimme a mini bic, anytime, anywhere for .99 cents, I will give you fire.:D
 
When I started getting into primitive skills the bowdrill was my first 'survival' skill and it was my fire making skill of choice for years. I was so confident with it that I never carried a bic or a firesteel. I'd just make a kit. That was until I was taken into a different area. I was a desert rat. So on a trip to Wyoming in April I figured I'd have some trouble but sooner or later I'd get a coal. By the time I got a coal I would not have made it in a true emergency (I did get one though!)

I put firesteel loops on most of my sheaths after that trip but in a true situation, Im looking for that bic.
 
tonym said:
Hell, you can get a flame with shavings of almost any dry wood as long as your shavings are fine enough... I think we should all know how to get fire with natural materials. I also think everyone should learn friction fire methods. But lets face it; If I went back in to time and gave them old mountain men a nice bic lighter and container of PJCB's, I would be 1 popular SOB.... :D
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Yeah, when I was a young kid I asked my older brother to teach me how to use a fire-bow as he learned in the scouts...he laughed, threw me a bic lighter and said "here, you think Daniel Boone (my child hood hero) would have been rubbing sticks together if he had one of these?".

I nearly always use natural tinders now whether using a fire steel, matches, or a lighter...or a bow drill...but I think going into the woods in the cold months without a reliable tinder of some sort that will work well under wet conditions would be ill-advised. For me that usually means a nice rich hunk of fatwood in my pack even though it's nearly everywhere here. However I will also take trioxane, PJCBs, or wetfire...and a candle.
 
Being the Hardwoodsman that I am, only fatwood I can get is one shelf at the hardware store right next to the bics and lighter fluid. So to me fatwood is for the weak!

After meeting Iawoodsman and Iz Turley and taking the 1 stick fire to heart. I know that even in wet weather I can get a fire going. The firesteel is my preferred method, even over a bic as I have had them fail to light in very cold weather and at high altitude. My second choice is flint and steel. And char cloth is nice but you can char lots of natural materials that work just as well like punk wood or milkweed ovum.

Knowing how to use shavings and other natural materials to construct your tinder bundle is a valuable skill. As if you can get an ember, but have a crappy tender bundle you still won't have fire.
 
skab8541 said:
Being the Hardwoodsman that I am, only fatwood I can get is one shelf at the hardware store right next to the bics and lighter fluid. So to me fatwood is for the weak!
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One really cool thing about this forum is the diversity of the areas discussed and lessons learned about those areas through the experiences of the outdoors-men that live in them.

Yes thin dry shavings of nearly any wood will catch a spark as will thistle, grass tops, Cedar bark and others when they are dry. Yes the one-stick-fire is a good skill to practice because one never knows where they may travel. Here in my woods in the east Appalachian Rain Forest during the late fall rains it can rain every day for two and three weeks straight, rain for several days in a row between breaks. Even during the breaks in the rain the fogs and mists are often so thick moisture is constantly dripping off the tree branches, the forest floor is soaked, and you get soaking wet just walking through them any length of time at all. Here under those particular circumstances to not use the fatwood that is laying all around to start a necessary fire would be for the foolish. Under such conditions I make my one-stick-fires using fatwood and I'll be warm before anyone attempting to make a one-stick-fire out of any hardwood even gets their fire lay set up.
 
mistwalker said:
Here in my woods in the east Appalachian Rain Forest during the late fall rains it can rain every day for two and three weeks straight, rain for several days in a row between breaks.
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Boy howdy, aint that the truth. Moose
 
mistwalker said:
One really cool thing about this forum is the diversity of the areas discussed and lessons learned about those areas through the experiences of the outdoors-men that live in them.

Here under those particular circumstances to not use the fatwood that is laying all around to start a necessary fire would be for the foolish. Under such conditions I make my one-stick-fires using fatwood and I'll be warm before anyone attempting to make a one-stick-fire out of any hardwood even gets their fire lay set up.
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Can't argue with that. In my area it is Birch Bark that makes my life easy. Every climate has their hidden little gems.

For instance; who is going to spend time splitting wood into kindling when there are hundreds of dry little branches hanging off the base of Hemlock, pine, spruce, and other Conifers... These branches are usually dry even in wet weather and burn quick, and can be had in all sizes to make a complete fire lay.
However if you are in a nice controlled outdoor setting, it is great idea to experiment and take yourself out of your comfort zone. Use materials you haven't used before, and do it with a tool you are not familiar with. It can only make you better.
 
moosez45 said:
Boy howdy, aint that the truth. Moose
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Yeah, you know what it's like here too don't you?

tonym said:
Can't argue with that. In my area it is Birch Bark that makes my life easy. Every climate has their hidden little gems.

For instance; who is going to spend time splitting wood into kindling when there are hundreds of dry little branches hanging off the base of Hemlock, pine, spruce, and other Conifers... These branches are usually dry even in wet weather and burn quick, and can be had in all sizes to make a complete fire lay.
However if you are in a nice controlled outdoor setting, it is great idea to experiment and take yourself out of your comfort zone. Use materials you haven't used before, and do it with a tool you are not familiar with. It can only make you better.
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The dead lower branches of the Cedar trees here with their diverse size availability on just one tree are a favorite kindling of mine. In a stand of Cedars using fatwood as tinder and first fuel I can have a fire taller than I am even in the fall rains in a really short amount of time.

Yeah, want to learn to truly appreciate a well made bushcraft knife for bushcraft? Just spend 30 years practicing the crafts with tactical tools :) . Not that I plan on stopping that any time soon....
 
I'm sure a lot of guys think I'm hacking on them when I talk about using fatwood and birch bark. But the truth is that I am jealous, I think those two fire aids are some of the coolest things God put on this earth. I wish we had them.
But we have things here that can help. But in wet weather the split wood fire is the only thing I can get to work if I don't use packed in tinder.
Thanks to Iawoodsman for teaching it to me.
This video shows the tortures we have to go through here in wet conditions to get warm. This shows the first stages in a split wood fire.
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And then what's even worse is that if you had to depend on friction fire in wet weather here you have to make your own tinder bundle out of shavings.
[youtube]BJwozxaX_SY[/youtube]

I used to be dumb enough or elitist enough to think that fatwood, pj cottonballs and birch bark were pussified as you say. That was until recently, I've failed to get embers out of the last several times making a set in the woods. So I carry pj balls for back up no matter how pussified it is.:D
The reason is, I don't like the idea of dying of hypothermia while trying to get a friction splitwood fire going.:thumbup:
Iz
 
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