Help blowing coal into flame

Cody Hofsommer

Cody Hofsommer

Joined
Dec 2, 2011
Messages
913
So I guess I really suck at blowing a BIG coal into flame. There's no reason it shouldn't have gone, except for operator error. I had a piece of chaga the size of your little finger and burned up a nest of cat tail/birchbark and a nest of fluffed twine. Burned the whole thing up! Never got a flame! I lit the twine with just a couple sparks from the ferro rod, so it wasn't wet. Tried some fat wood shavings also, which I also lit with the ferro. Lots of smoke, no flame.

Any thoughts?
 
I am not an expert but I will give you some of the tips I use.

1. Don't give up!

2. Make your tinder bundle in varying layers. Rough/coarse bark twine, whatever. Then medium and then fine. Make the fine as fine as you can. sometimes you can get inner bark down to almost a dust. Coarse on bottom supporting medium and then fine on top. Use enough coarse and medium to support the fine and to help prevent the coal from falling through.

3. Make sure the coal is big and will not fall apart. Give it time to grow. Place the coal directly onto the finest layer of the tinder bundle. Pinch the tinder bundle folding the fine portion about halfway around the coal but still allowing it to breathe. Holding the coarse outer later press the fine inner layer up against the coal as you blow.

4. Take a deep breath, hold the tinder bundle about head height, maybe a little higher. If you can have the wind to your back. Raise your elbows to help your ribs expand and allow for deeper breaths. Start to blow nice and easy directly onto the coal and past it. Your coal should be between you and the rest of the tinder bundle. Imagine trying to blow the coal deeper into the depth of the bundle with a long, slow, and concentrated breath. Use your lips to help focus the oxygen onto the coal.

5. If your bundle starts to loose shape take the time to fix it and cradle that coal.

6. Blow harder as the smoke increases. You shouldn't have to blow REALLY hard, just remember to increase your efforts as the smoke increases. Soon you should have flame.

7. Think about it differently. You are not blowing the coal into flame. You are trying to ignite the tinder bundle with the coal by increasing heat by adding oxygen.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask more questions.

Jeremy
 
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It helps some people to use a little blow pipe to make the ember flare up. I use a 4 in. bone hair pipe bead that I keep in my fire kits. You can find them online from many sources...but any type of small diameter tubing will work.
 
You had all the right materials - it would be hard not to get flames. Is there somebody that can do a video of another attempt and then we could see what's going on?

Doc
 
DOC-CANADA said:
You had all the right materials - it would be hard not to get flames. Is there somebody that can do a video of another attempt and then we could see what's going on?

Doc
Click to expand...

Thats what I thought! With that big of chuck of chaga, I figgured I should be able to put that in a nest of fluffed twine and just a couple of breaths and fire, but no...
Not sure about the video. Maybe.

Like I said, I burnt two plumb sized nest gone, it would smoke and go right into coal, and never flare up??? I'll try some of things Jermey suggested this tomorrow or this weekend.
 
Try punk wood instead of the tinder bundle. Get your coal and just add the fine punk to the coal...and keep adding the punk. The coal will grow and the pile will burn. The punk pile will be around the size of a baseball in some GO's.
 
Cody Hofsommer said:
So I guess I really suck at blowing a BIG coal into flame. There's no reason it shouldn't have gone, except for operator error. I had a piece of chaga the size of your little finger and burned up a nest of cat tail/birchbark and a nest of fluffed twine. Burned the whole thing up! Never got a flame! I lit the twine with just a couple sparks from the ferro rod, so it wasn't wet. Tried some fat wood shavings also, which I also lit with the ferro. Lots of smoke, no flame.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Get a length of copper tubing, ¼” OD. Get a length of surgical tubing, ¼” ID.

Slide the end of the copper tube inside the surgical tube. The copper gives you fire proof. The rubber gives you flexible. The combo needn’t be big to keep your face out of the smoke and spark.

Starting a fire or tending a fire, your portable bellows lets you put air right where you want it.
 
As I read your problem my first thought was that it sounded like you were using too fine a tinder bundle, then I wondered why that though seemed familiar....you aren't the first to ask this stuff ;)
A chap here was doing something very similar, using cotton wool
http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12744

Cotton wool, thistle down, catail and such are all good ember extenders, but pretty lousy for getting a flame by themselves. As an ember extender their job, and what they are good for, is to char, then smoulder.

I believe that the problem is that they char too easily, they go black from a pretty low heat, once black they are easy to get to glow, but no longer have enough fuel in them to burn with a flame. Blowing on an ember gives more oxygen to react with the charred material and the ember. That gives off heat which drives volatile gasses off neighbouring material, that is what you are trying to get hot enough to burst into flame.

Sparks from a firesteel (ferro rod) are so hot and localised that they raise the temperature of the wool fibres above their flash point, they lack the mass to dissipate the heat.

Things like clematis, honey suckle and grape bark work well, as does dry purple moor grass blades and dead bracken, straw isn't great, but works, dry hay seems to be a little better. For information, birch bark is lousy for this kind of thing

It seems that whatever material you use for ember tinder fire lighting produces really thick, grey/green smoke just before it ignites. I have always taken that thicker smoke to be loaded with unburned hydrocarbons.
Click to expand...

I have never needed the tube/straw method for a tinder bundle, but have used it, or similar for coaxing camp fires back to life. You can also blow through the lanyard tube on a knife (sub1/4" hole) or the little diamond shape space you make when you put the tips of both thumbs and index fingers together.

Tinder bundles seven inches across also help, you don't runout of fuel before achieving "critical mass" :) Not saying that this is a must, there aren't so many hard and fast "rules" but it can help.

Another technique is to sandwich the tinder bundle between split slabs of wood, or tight twig bundles, like your ember is filling between two pieces of wood "bread" this can really boost the temperature and get even damp tinder to go to flame.

Hope that that has helped some.
 
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What I am not clear on is what part of the cattails you were using? It makes a difference as to what to tell you.
 
That was a good read Claycomb! That sound a like what was happening to me down to tee. I'll have to try some more today.

Doc, I was using the fluff from the cattail head.

How good of a tinder nest is sisal twine (bailing twine) for this? I have LOTS of that and it's dry and it lights with a ferro.
 
Cody Hofsommer said:
So I guess I really suck at blowing a BIG coal into flame. There's no reason it shouldn't have gone, except for operator error. I had a piece of chaga the size of your little finger and burned up a nest of cat tail/birchbark and a nest of fluffed twine. Burned the whole thing up! Never got a flame! I lit the twine with just a couple sparks from the ferro rod, so it wasn't wet. Tried some fat wood shavings also, which I also lit with the ferro. Lots of smoke, no flame.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Maybe it's just me but sometimes cattail fluff can really hamper blowing a coal into flames. Try fluffed up cedar or other stringy bark types though cedar is the best.
 
Some good tnder bundles.

Hickory plus some unknown dry fluffed bark plus punk wood.



Cedar bark with a bit of milk weed ovum fluff.



Dry grass, yellow birch bark and some cedar bark. Chaga coal.

 
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