Natural Tinder found everywhere?

messer454

messer454

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Oct 2, 2006
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To go along with the very informative firestarter thread (I had no idea there was a difference in steels and I have had them for years), what natural tinder do you use if you do NOT have Birch bark. In Central Ohio where I live and hunt I do not belive there is any. I always carry stuff with me but what if I didn't have it? Your thoughts please on natural tinder found anywhere that only needs a spark.
 
From my days as a Boy Scout I always felt bad using a hand full of dried leaves, but throw a spark from an ESEE fire kit in there and she burns gooooood.

Fuzzies from the heads of cat tails. Lots of stuff that you can shave down very fine will take a spark.
 
If you scrape dry wood with a knife, you can usually create small enough fibers to start a fire with a fire steel. Make sure to scrape the wood at a 90 degree angle to get small fibers. Once you have a little bundle of these fibers, it will take a hot spark easily. Since you can get to dry wood in most places (batoning or not) this is a reliable tinder for me, granted you have to make it yourself.
 
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Here in the boreal...good 'ol birchbark. If raining, the inner layer is usually dry. An old indian told me not to strip it all around the tree, or the tree may die. Don't know if it's true. Birchbark is easier to get than fatwood, but fatwood is king. :) Procure both, and have a raging fire in minutes.
 
The best way to find good tender for your area is to get out and test what is around. It gives you practice and experience!
 
here in south MS you cant swing a dead cat without hitting a yellow pine stump, so I am in lighter heaven. Even without it though, you can scrape your jeans with a blade and get a little pile of denim cotton that willtake a spark pretty well. might not be the most natural thing, but I am assuming there will be pants.
 
I did it the other day with crumbled up dry leaves. It took a bit longer than with good stuff, but it worked. I didn't think it would at first, i got them to smolder, but they went out. But the pile felt warm so I struck a few more times though and it worked...seemed like maybe the bit of heat from the smolder dried them out a bit more and they caught next try.

Once I sparked some sawdust that carpenter ants had conveniently dumped outside their tree in a nice pile. And as the Gov says you can make your own dust if you have to.
 
hiwa said:
Here in the boreal...good 'ol birchbark. If raining, the inner layer is usually dry. An old indian told me not to strip it all around the tree, or the tree may die. Don't know if it's true. Birchbark is easier to get than fatwood, but fatwood is king. :) Procure both, and have a raging fire in minutes.
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you can strip the outer bark layer totally, just don't strip the inner bark, this is where all the vessels are that feed the tree.

Always make sure your natural tinder is dry. I scavenge when doing stuff and stuff it in my pant pockets to dry, or if quickly needed in my underpants. Body heat will get rid of a lot of moist (as long as you're not sweating like an otter ;))

resin can be used, especially in combination with other dry stuff. easily found in pine woods
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In my Area Cedar Bark is great stuff , pull from trees bare handed and ball up in palm rub hands together ,makes tinder nice and fluffy and you can easily get a fire going from a few sparks...,
 
Bird and mouse nests are almost always dry when you find them and take a spark quickly.
 
We have all kinds of wood in our area that work great for firestarting. An easy way is like what Adam said is to scrape at a 90 degree angle and get a bunch of scrapings that light very easy. Other than that dried leaves, birds nests, dried/dead pine needles, long dried grass/weeds.
 
I can have always been able to find one of the following:

- Cattails
- Birch bark
- Pine resin
- Dry leaves (though this can be a hit or miss method)
- Dry grass

The dry grass seems to work really well if you can find the right types. It can usually be found in clumps tangled in the new growth up a few inches off the ground. I am not sure what it is called but there is a particular sort of long broad grass that I find around here that takes a spark very easily.
 
the dried inner bark of Cottonwood works well, as do thistle down, Cattail down and many other thin fluffy plant fibers. Even old jute or hemp rope fluffed up will often work as well.
 
For us city slickers... If the "Big One" ever hits in CA and we are with out power for an extended period of time I have found dryer lint to be an excellent starter. One spark with the Sweedish Steel and your good to go. Doesn't take much lint at all and it burns good. I actually empty out the dryer lint trap every time I remember and just store it in a glass jug. Just a thought. :)
 
Well I got off my bike this morning to wander off the road, theres dead dry over grown brush everywhere, refuse and trash like news papers, found an oil drum far off the road in black, that wasn't rusting but was empty oddly, because of all the sun and head weaker plant life dries quickly in some places, so I've been able to gather that, I have a bunch of stuff I brought home in a bag, ganna see what burns and what doesn't. Izula is having fun shaving stuff. But if you go to c comm they have things called tube vaults, tough little shites! I stuffed a zip lock full of cotton balls with lots of pj all over them, and that was rolled compact, and shoved in the tube with barn twine i kept dipping in a hot wax pool i gathered from melting candles and mixing with lighter fluid, messy to make, but tried it with a cut off top soda can to keep wax melted, alot of prep but just interested in finding weird ways to make and do stuff :) the twiney stuff works awesome :) even when wet, a few sparks from rod and it catches.

Later tonight going to look at trees around me when I go for my run and see what I can use and scounge up, like above posters said, just got to look around you for whats burnable, cause no one place from any of us may or is, your surroundings, so just takes a little time to wander and see what you can find and gather, to use.
 
What I do (as already suggested), is collect tinder as I walk. If you are going to an unfamiliar area, look it up ahead of time to see what you will be looking for in that area. You can bring a small amount of known tinder with you in a ziplock to get you started. It's all about assuming you will need it - same reason we carry knives.
 
hiwa said:
Here in the boreal...good 'ol birchbark. If raining, the inner layer is usually dry. An old indian told me not to strip it all around the tree, or the tree may die. Don't know if it's true. Birchbark is easier to get than fatwood, but fatwood is king. :) Procure both, and have a raging fire in minutes.
Click to expand...

This is true and I would advise against trying to just peel the outer layer of bark off as a lot of time it will come off and can take the inner bark with it. The inner bark is the important stuff called the Cambium layer, it contains the vascular system of the tree, all trees have them and they are always the inner layer. If you need to harvest bark from a living tree then what you should do is to take the bark in long thin strips running the length of the the tree. If you do this then you are damaging the least amount of Cambium as possible. You should also spread out the harvest around the tree and across many trees. If you take circles going around the tree and take the cambium layer then you will girdle the tree same as if you ran a chainsaw around the base. Also any time you take the bark off of a tree you are leaving it open to infections, so if you only take a small portion of the bark then the tree is more likely to be able to fight off the infection or fungus and keep the tree alive. Of course I advise only taking the bark that is falling off of the birch already as there is usually plenty but this is how you should harvest the inner bark of any living tree so as not to kill it. This way you will have plenty of trees to come back to in the future to practice your skills with. Altho if it is a survival situation the go nuts and take what you need to survive, the forest will overcome that I can promise you.
 
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