Lets talk tinder....

messer454

messer454

Joined
Oct 2, 2006
Messages
2,122
All of you experienced fire builders out there,

I have come to the unpleasant realization that while I have been able to get a coal from flint and steel as well as BSA hotspark (even with my Mora) on char cloth, I am very inexperienced when it comes to natural tinder. I have been experimenting with this lately in the comfort of my garage and I am having loads of trouble getting a coal in Oak, Pine, and even Fat Wood shavings that I had laying around. I have no faith in this method at this point as I can't do it dry standing up in the garage. The spark smokes for a milisecond then goes out. I see everyone with a hotspark attached to their knife sheath and I wonder where the tinder pouch is? Are all of you guys depending on natural tinder? My question I guess is three fold for starters.

1. What natural tinder do you USE that requires no advanced prep? As many as you have gotten to WORK please.

2. Is it vastly easier to light than fatwood? I thought this would be pretty easy and it isn't.

3. How fast can you get a coal in it?

Thanks in advance.
 
I have practiced a little bit with natural tinder and I know that it varies on your location. I have had success with crushed (almost powdered) dry oak leaves. It took a bit to get a good hot spark landing where it needed to land, but it wasn't that hard.

I think if you are going to use bark or leaves then make sure that you have them whittled down very, very fine. I usually have a bit of dryer lint on me just in case. Here is a pic of my firesteel with a tinder compartment.

*edited to answer other questions.

No, the oak leaves were not a easy to light as fatwood.
It took about 5 minutes to get the spark to land properly and once it did I had fire in under 30 seconds.

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I was experimenting this week with just using dry wood shavings (from 2x4's). I made some fine wood curls, then crumpled them up. I was able to lite these pretty easily (2-4 strikes). I did just get a new firesteel, a Light My Fire Army model, where I was using a worn down scout before. I can get MUCH bigger sparks from the bigger firesteel. So maybe a small firesteel is a source of some of your troubles? I also switched to using the spine (which has a very square edge) of my Krein Bushcraft and it is working great. I can get a lot of leverage with a knife spine vs. a small striker or hacksaw blade.

L
 
I can light:
* vaseline soaked cotton balls
* fatwood
* regular dry wood

Tricks:

For fatwood and regular wood, try fatwood first then graduate, you need to "scrape" shavings off of the wood, by either holding the edge of your blade perpendicular to the wood, or by useing the spine of your knife, spine must be sharply squared off.

by scraping, you get shavings that are very thin, and lightable, I can almost guarentee that you can't light it if you try and "shave" them off.

The more the marrier! Get as large a pile as you can, at least the size of a quarter and an inch high.

Use multiple successive strikes. try laying the end of your rod on the ground right in front of your tinder at a very low angle, then use multiple successive scrapings until you get fire. Be carefull not to knock your tinder everywere! Usually high pressure and slow strikes work better than light pressure and fast strikes.

Practice, Practice, Practice. You'll get the hang of it, and find what works best for you.
 
IH8U, nice rig there. Drier lint is my tinder of choice, too,also, I bet you can compress a lot of it into that container.
For me fatwood splinters are a great secondary tinder, to place on the initial lint, as is
shredded birch bark.
Also very dry dead hay like grass works very well, but is best used to twist up into a nest to hold it all together if none is available dead conifer branches are usually pretty abundant and burn well.
I have yet to try cedar bark, I hear it works very well.
 
This is how I lit Fatwood....
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Maybe you are not shaving the Fatwood small enough, use your mult-tool to make dust !
 
stingray4540 said:
you need to "scrape" shavings off of the wood
Click to expand...

I agree with this advice for fatwood. I don't shave it like you see in some of the beautiful fuzz-stick pics in this forum. I sort of drag my striker along the wood and get small broken pieces of the fatwood - almost like sawdust.

As mentioned before, strike very slowly and deliberately with good pressure. You're trying to push off the chunks of the rod, so the bigger the better.
 
My favorite natural tinder is fatwood, when scraped with a knife or saw blade it quickly turns into fine tinder. There are a lot of poplar trees in my area, and unless it's been raining for awhile, it usually pretty easy to find a dead tree or limb and scrape or crumble up some bark for tinder. Beech and poplar leaves work well as they are, I lay a couple on top of each other on a stone if possible and with a good spark they light up easily. Of course grass works well, especially in the fall and winter where it's easy to grab a handful from most fields. I've even scrapped fine ribbons of of green wood, while they won't burn immediately, in the sun or a pocket they dry in a couple of hours, and even oak is easy to scrape when green.
 
Thanks for this post. Man do I feel stupid!
I've read in the past about fat wood and last month while at Meijers in the camping dept., they had some. I bough it and tried to light it. First with my Swedish fire steel and then with a match.. No luck! I thought to myself "oh well", this stuff sucks!
Until this post, I had no idea I had to shave it! I was trying it with the full stick! DUH!

I just now tried it with shaving this time and what do you know?...it works!
Thanks all....I was preparing my fat wood for my camping junk pile :-)

Now, I just cut off a medium size piece and put it in my knife sheaths pocket.
I can't wait to try it in the wilds!
 
Birchbark. As soon as I step into the wilderness away from the truck I am looking for it. Seriously, they arent kidding when they say it burns like gasoline.

I know nothing of this fabled "fatwood" that everyone around here is always talking about. :D
 
Fatwood and birchbark are the 2 best natural tinders I've ever found. Both will take a spark from a firesteel but you have to "prepare" it properly. To increase the odds of lighting either with a firesteel you need to think "sawdust" instead of shavings. I use birch bark alot here in Michigan and I usually lay a strip on the ground and scrape my knife blade at a 90 deg. angle until I get a decent size pile (think 3 or 4 stacked quarters). Birch bark dust burns fairly quickly so make sure to have your wood ready.
 
messer454 said:
1. What natural tinder do you USE that requires no advanced prep? As many as you have gotten to WORK please.

2. Is it vastly easier to light than fatwood? I thought this would be pretty easy and it isn't.

3. How fast can you get a coal in it?
Click to expand...

1. Fatwood, cattail fluff, pampas grass, dead wood, foxtail, dead grasses... too many things to list them all.

2. No; they're all fairly easy (fatwood included), when done right.

3. I haven't timed it, but I'd guess about 5-10 seconds of tinder preparation, then 1-3 seconds to light the tinder.

Here, read this; it may help you:

http://www.mikespinak.com/articles/Essays/e994firesteelhowto.html
 
Great idea with the Fatwood dust :)
Up until now I have been blessed to get Fatwood curls going with just a strike or 2 by just using thin curls.

But I bet with using the dust as the first layer - you should always get them with the first 1 good strike everytime :cool:.
 
Evolute-thanks for the link.

Everyone thanks for the advice. I read everything and went out and tried again and had fatwood going in about 10 strikes!!!

What I was doing wrong:

1. I had seen pitdogs earlier post so I was making fatwood "dust" but I was not making enough of it

2. Biggest thing was I was sparking it like I would a flint instead of bearing down and almost trying to cut it. This does make a flood of sparks which apparently are much hotter!

Here is the funny thing. I completed this on fatwood and pine right before my nephew (a young Boy Scout) came for a visit. I was demostrating it to him when he commented that he had the same kind of firesteel but also had never started a fire with it. Long story short my flint and char cloth got a coal but failed to ignite for me but I got the pine and fatwood to ignite with a striker every time. Go figure. Thanks guys, more practice tomorrow.
 
Go for a dayhike or even a long walk and collect anything that looks like it will take a spark. I like to keep the different things I find separated by species. Sometimes a seed head with a tny bit of fluff isn't much on it's own but once you get a handfull it starts looking like tinder.

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This is the result of one such walk around the field we were camped in. Alot of times I will have people do this on their hike in or while doing compass navigation, wilderness multi-tasking.

Your first firesteel is for learning so get sparking, you can always buy a new one. Mac
 
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