Tinder
Tinder is easily combustible material used to
Tinder can be made of any flammable substance, as long as it is finely divided and has an open structure.
Technique
Any flammable material may be used as long as it is finely divided. As the tinder gets thinner, the surface area and edges increase, making it ignite more easily.
Wood tinder can be made by carefully shaving thin slivers off a larger piece. Another method which keeps these slivers together, is to make a feather stick. The driest wood, which makes the best tinder, is that of dead branches that have not yet fallen to the ground.
If a fire is to be lit by sparks rather than matches, char cloth, punkwood, fungus or down are commonly used to catch the sparks. However, fungi should be selected with care as some release toxic fumes on combustion.[original research?] Char cloth can be made by placing plant-based fabric (usually cotton) in a tin box into a campfire; like charcoal, it is the product of anhydrous pyrolysis. It is very fragile, and should usually be prepared only in small quantities.
Pitchwood is the resinous wood which decays last from dead
Embers of burned paper, leaves and other sheetlike materials are easily carried off by air currents, where they can alight upon other objects and ignite them. In outdoor campfires, paper can be wadded up to reduce this hazard; wadded paper also burns more quickly.
The gathering of tinder, and perhaps more importantly, its dry storage is one of the most critical aspects of many survival situations.
Materials
Materials used as tinder around the world include:[5]
- Small twigs (poor tinder but commonly available)[6]
- Paper, paper towels, toilet paper, etc.
- Dry
- Birch bark
- Dead, standing (usually one season old) goldenrod
- )
- Char cloth
- Cotton balls, cotton swabs, tampons
- seed "fluff" from plants like dandelions, Cottonwood, etc.
- Some types of fungus, such as chaga and amadou (or horse's hoof fungus)
- Dry bread or knäckebröd and shoe polish
- Punk wood (in the process of rotting) or charred wood
- Bird down
- abandoned bird nests
- Fatwood, also known as rich pine or pine knot
- Fine-grade soap-coated steel wool
- Shaved magnesium or other alkaline earth metals[4]
- Specially prepared stringybark, known as morthi, used by the Kaurna people of South Australia[8]
See also
The dictionary definition of tinder at Wiktionary
References
- ^ "Wild Wood Survival". Retrieved 2009-04-14.
- ^ Uploaded on September 30, 2008 (2008-09-30). "Test Your Fire-Building IQ | Field & Stream". Fieldandstream.com. Archived from the original on 2008-09-19. Retrieved 2011-06-23.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Ratliff, Donald E. Sr., Map, Compass and Campfire, Binford & Mort, Publishers, 1964, page 45.
- ^ ISBN 0-7637-4807-2. Retrieved 14 Apr 2009.
- ^ "Char Mastery: Charred Tinder How-To". Real World Survivor. 19 March 2019. Archived from the original on 2020-10-22. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
- ^ "Billy Goat Mountain Adventures" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-12-22. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
- ^ "Whipperleys". Archived from the original on 2022-03-05. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
- ^ Schultz, Chester (22 October 2018). "Place Name Summary 6/23: Brukangga and Tindale's uses of the word bruki" (PDF). Adelaide Research & Scholarship. University of Adelaide. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 September 2021. Retrieved 16 November 2020.