Inonotus Obliquus

Jeremy Barnard

Jeremy Barnard

Joined
Jun 15, 2006
Messages
853
Can this stuff be purchased? Looking to use as fire starter with flint and steel. If there is a better natural option I'd like to know. Thanks
 
It can, but the stuff you buy is both expensive and also not useful for firestarting since it is the black outer crud that is used to make tea with its claimed anti-cancer properties. There are natural alternatives to chaga but often require some processing to make them work. Don't forget that even chaga must be cured properly or it won't work. Its not like you can just pry a piece of chaga out of a birch tree and then use it. When you pry it out it is very wet and it must be left to dry usually for a few weeks. Then you will want to process it to get at the orange corky stuff for use with flint in steel. So basically, dry it and cut it up into usable chunks and it lasts (although it does harden up and become difficult to use over time).

Amadu is the next alternative. Whereas chaga is only found on live birch trees (usually the trees look a tad unhealthy), bracket fungus is plentiful on dead birch trees. For this, you need to harvest the velvet, which is the thin section of the fungus where it is attached to the tree. Apparently boiling it in ammonia (or you can use your own urine as a substitute) and drying it out conditions it so that it will catch a spark like chaga. Other alternatives that work are the ovum of a dead/spent milkweed pod and slicing the pith of dried up golden rod stocks into fine slivers. I've gotten the pith to catch a spark but it was a very weak ember. Scab has a video of sparking the milkweed ovum and he also demonstrated blowing it into flames.

These are all fun things to try. Chaga does perhaps the best job of holding an ember for a long time. So much so, that some folks will take a big chunk of the stuff and use it as a stove (seems a bit of a waste to me given the time it takes to find and dry out, but its a good trick). Chaga isn't all that bad for striking and catching a spark, but it is still far easier to ignite charcloth with flint and steel than it is to ignite chaga.

Beyond the above, a number of plant products can be cooked in the same manner as making charcloth at home. Some people have indicated using cattail heads and charring them, others golden rod pith. You then use this material like you would charcloth. I haven't had much success with this yet and find that while it catches a spark, it is often crumbly and not as easy to work with as charcloth.

Here is one of my older videos where I harvest a pile of chaga, just in case you are interested in hunting for it. You need to have a lot of birch in your area to have success.

[youtube]cFTEGmWWe_U[/youtube]
 
kgd said:
It can, but the stuff you buy is both expensive and also not useful for firestarting since it is the black outer crud that is used to make tea with its claimed anti-cancer properties. There are natural alternatives to chaga but often require some processing to make them work. Don't forget that even chaga must be cured properly or it won't work. Its not like you can just pry a piece of chaga out of a birch tree and then use it. When you pry it out it is very wet and it must be left to dry usually for a few weeks. Then you will want to process it to get at the orange corky stuff for use with flint in steel. So basically, dry it and cut it up into usable chunks and it lasts (although it does harden up and become difficult to use over time).

Amadu is the next alternative. Whereas chaga is only found on live birch trees (usually the trees look a tad unhealthy), bracket fungus is plentiful on dead birch trees. For this, you need to harvest the velvet, which is the thin section of the fungus where it is attached to the tree. Apparently boiling it in ammonia (or you can use your own urine as a substitute) and drying it out conditions it so that it will catch a spark like chaga. Other alternatives that work are the ovum of a dead/spent milkweed pod and slicing the pith of dried up golden rod stocks into fine slivers. I've gotten the pith to catch a spark but it was a very weak ember. Scab has a video of sparking the milkweed ovum and he also demonstrated blowing it into flames.

These are all fun things to try. Chaga does perhaps the best job of holding an ember for a long time. So much so, that some folks will take a big chunk of the stuff and use it as a stove (seems a bit of a waste to me given the time it takes to find and dry out, but its a good trick). Chaga isn't all that bad for striking and catching a spark, but it is still far easier to ignite charcloth with flint and steel than it is to ignite chaga.

Beyond the above, a number of plant products can be cooked in the same manner as making charcloth at home. Some people have indicated using cattail heads and charring them, others golden rod pith. You then use this material like you would charcloth. I haven't had much success with this yet and find that while it catches a spark, it is often crumbly and not as easy to work with as charcloth.

Here is one of my older videos where I harvest a pile of chaga, just in case you are interested in hunting for it. You need to have a lot of birch in your area to have success.

[youtube]cFTEGmWWe_U[/youtube]
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info.
DOC-CANADA said:
I don't know about purchased, but as far as a natural option, I. obliquus (AKA True Tinder Fungus, Chaga) literally grows on trees.

Doc
Click to expand...
Yeah... birch trees arent too common here in AR as far as I can tell. That's why I asked if it could be purchased.
 
IMO, charcloth is as good an alternative. It's easy to make and as plentiful as cloth. I gave away some IO samples on BCUSA about a month or so ago to some folks who didn't have access to it, but my supply is tapped out for now.
 
We do have a few river birch here. Not sure if they grow on them or not but ill have to keep an eye out next time i go into the woods.
 
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