Cattail fuzz as tinder?

cmdionne

cmdionne

Joined
Oct 27, 2006
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So saturday night I was hanging out with a few friends of mine and we decided to have a campfire in his back yard. I had my kit with me and thought it would be some good practice on firestarting. I had grabbed a few cat tail heads while I was on a hike a few weeks ago, intending to try the fuzz as tinder, and they were in my vest that I was wearing.

I got everything all set up, and when I hit a spark into the fuzz ball, it went up like crazy, but just as quickly it went back out. I tried to start the fire with the fuzz several times (I thought I had read/heard somewhere that this is good for that), and I had absolutely no success. I eventually got the fire going with a PJCB (Man those things are great), but I really want to figure out what went wrong with the cat tails.

So, I'm asking you guys what did I do wrong? Was the original information I had read (or at least thought I had read) wrong? Does one need to use a whole lot of the stuff? Have any of you had success using cat tail fuzz as tinder? Any special tricks?
 
it's great for turning spark into flame but you need a flame extender to keep it going shredded bark or tinder fungus or piece of punky wood work well..things with a low ignition point like cattail dander tend to butrn up quickly for that very reason.. so while it is good for getting flame it is no good at keeping it at least in my limitied experience I'd say you need an intermediate stage between the dander and the rest of your tinder
 
Another thing that will work is small, very thin, flimsy pieces of Birch (Betula papyrifera) bark. Place a few pieces among the Cattail fluff and it will light up. Then add more substantial pieces of Birch bark.

Doc
 
The way I use it is I get a handful of the stuff, stack my feather sticks on top and spark, normally catching the feather sticks the first try.
 
As mentioned above - it is the gateway to a flame. You really need another tinder to help nourish the flame. The advantage is that the fluff will catch a spark immediately on the first strike. Yeah -the PJCB are pretty much the best thing going! Too bad they don't grow on trees!
 
Keep in mind the more you fluff it up, the easier it will be to catch a spark, but the faster it will burn out. Just go grab a whole bunch of cattails and try to work out a good fluffiness to suit your needs.
 
I had the very same experience this winter playing in the fireplace. On the way home from a meeting I pulled over to the side of the road and grabbed some cat tail, as well as another wetland grass with a nice plume on the top (reed?). Anyway, like you described, the cattail lit easily, but went out instantly. The reed also lit well (not quite as well), but burned a bit longer since it has more substantial twigs within the plume. Nothing like practice to really learn what works for you and what might not.
 
I recall a youtube video where a fella took a whole bunch of cattail fluff and made it into charcloth, er I mean charfluff? Chartail? That should make it easy to light and maintain some of the flame for a bit. I'll see if I can round some up to try soon.
 
This winter I was playing around in the woods and came across some dried up old thistle plants. They still had the fluffy seed pods on them. I opened them up, put leaves and stems from the plant with them and struck some quick fires. Worked well.
 
Yeah it's been the same with me using Cat-tail fluff, it made me wonder whether some people actually tried this stuff or just quoted what they read in books !!!!!
 
cmdionne, as others have mentioned here, you need to have a secondary tinder at hand to catch the brief flame from the fluff. Here is a thread I started a while back about using fluff from dandilions as tinder. I included step by step instructions and pictures. It should be applicable to cattail fluff as well.

-- FLIX
 
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