I tried making char cloth for the first time today. I used an old green t-shirt that i cut into pieces and put into a little metal tin. I punched a hole in the tin with a big nail and then threw it onto my BBQ grill. Once the smoke started slowing down to a little trickle(~7 or 8 minutes maybe) I took it off the fire and plugged the hole with the nail.
When I opened the tin I found that I had probably packed the cotton material too tightly together as the majority of the char cloth still had some brown and a lot of green depending on how close it was to the center of the tin. I threw out most of the pieces of char cloth that had more green/brown than black but I did save a few pieces to play with just to see how my first attempt turned out.
On my first try I used a piece that was probably 75% green/brown and the good black section caught the spark easily and started to smolder like it should. I used the rest of the piece of char cloth(this piece was probably about 2"x4") to fold around the glowing embers and I started blowing on it, just to see what would happen when it got to the green/brown section. I kept blowing on it fast and hard and it burst into flames pretty easily.
Has anyone else ever tried half cooking the char cloth like I unintentionally did today? It seems like a great combination of tinder and char cloth all in one convenient piece.
Now I'm wishing I hadn't thrown out all those other green/brown/black pieces.
When I opened the tin I found that I had probably packed the cotton material too tightly together as the majority of the char cloth still had some brown and a lot of green depending on how close it was to the center of the tin. I threw out most of the pieces of char cloth that had more green/brown than black but I did save a few pieces to play with just to see how my first attempt turned out.
On my first try I used a piece that was probably 75% green/brown and the good black section caught the spark easily and started to smolder like it should. I used the rest of the piece of char cloth(this piece was probably about 2"x4") to fold around the glowing embers and I started blowing on it, just to see what would happen when it got to the green/brown section. I kept blowing on it fast and hard and it burst into flames pretty easily.
Has anyone else ever tried half cooking the char cloth like I unintentionally did today? It seems like a great combination of tinder and char cloth all in one convenient piece.
Now I'm wishing I hadn't thrown out all those other green/brown/black pieces.
