Making charcloth

[Ogri the trog]

Thats a really good idea



I didn't think of that, so surely there is something (soaking in Oil) that would help the sparks? we just have to find out what haha

Its not quite as straightforward as that....
If the donor cloth was soaked in oil, that oil would be cooked out during the charring process - reducing the oil to a thick sticky gunk (if any is left at all) which can stop the fabric fluffing up.

If there is an oil residue left on the cloth, it can help if the charring is not totally complete - then when you try to repeat the process, the second batch doesn't work as well - despite following the process to the letter.

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[nic.]

Funny reading back through this - when I tried it, I stuffed the tin full with cut circles of 100% cotton T-shirt in layers (perhaps this helps?) to ensure there was little oxygen. I thought this means the cloth won't burn but will just char. However I see different advice on here? I also didn't bother watching for the exhaust fumes to stop flaming, neither did I plug the whole in the tin. The tin was small (between shoe polish and travel sweets tin size) and we just chucked it on the fire at the edge in the embers and left it - forgot about it - then returned 15 minutes later and left it to cool.

At the end of the day it worked - So was I just lucky?

My understanding of the process it is that whatever oxygen is in the tin will very quickly get used up or flushed out, then as the cloth heats up it the volatile fraction of the cloth will come off as a gas- this can be ignited but it won't affect the process. When it stops gasing/ flaming it means there is nothing else to be burnt off. You could cook it longer, or take it out. It didn't matter when I tested it. You can plug the hole with a stick- but the amount of air that could travel through the pin hole won't be enough to let the charcloth burn, so that doesn't matter either. I think the only variable that really matters is the cloth you start with.

Still would be interested to know of anything that can enhance the catching properties of charcloth! - have heard saltpetre mentioned but that is probably hard to come by these days, and I'm sure that would be added after the charring process not before.

Nic

 

[tombear]

If ya can get it 100% flax linen works best of all and if you want to soup' it up after its cooled dip it in a strong potassium nitrate solution and let it sun dry on something knobbly it won't stick to. Once dry it will catch on the feeblest spark but dont use whole bits of it, break off a few bits and put these on top of a normal bit of char as the treated stuff burns very fast. Not tried it with cotton but charred linen is still pretty robust and is uneffected by being imersed.

ATB

Tom

 

[Everything Mac]

cheers guys - I'm going to try a yellow duster tonight.

Oddly enough I covered what was left of the fire to make some charcoal and an old sock was chucked in too (I'd planned on using this for the charcloth) - opened it up this morning and it worked pretty well. lol.

Andy

 

[Everything Mac]

Yellow duster works a treat!

Cheers guys!

Andy

 

[Samon]

here's the 'fire fluff' I make instead of char cloth. I'm giving some away with a ray mears book in the free stuff page!

it's not weed btw..it's finely grated egg box.

 

[MikeE]

I use Jute (or is it hemp?) sash cord from B&Q. Coil it tightly round in the tin (small empty tin of SWMBO's hair stuff from Toni & Guy). Once charred this holds it's shape and is strong. It's easily cut into lengths and packed into fire starting kit, and if you fluff up the end it catches a spark very easily! It acts like the slow match from a matchlock musket!!

 

[tombear]

The current good weather had us out again last night with a small fire so I decided to turn all the linen scraps (and a few bits of hemp) into char.

Anyhoo, we dug out a 2lb treacle tin we had been using to keep nails in, I stuck a 1/8th of a inch hole in the lid and stuffed it full of rough cut squares of cloth. Too tightly it would seem...

I cut a peg to block the hole and dug out my outdoor cooking welders gloves to handle it with.

Smoke puthered out of it quite happilly for about 20 minutes then with a almighty bang the lid came off (I assume something inside had blocked it) and went whizzing between my shoulder and the eldests head to land in a big pile of brush behind us. A few pieces of half cooked char followed it like confetti and we nearly wet ourselves! I was wearing a welding glove so I could pluck the tin out of the fire and cover the opening while they scrambled to find the lid.

On inspection, after a period of cooling only about 60 % of the contents were charred so I put them back in in roughly reverse order, and more loosely and stuck it on the fire again where it smoked and flared away for the best part of a half hour more. After it had cooled the whole lot was charred black yet retained a decent amount of strenght so can be easily handled.

The moral of this tale is don't pack the fabric in too tightly and make sure the can is angled well away from you. Straight up isn't good enough we discovered. I also failed to manage the fire in such a way that you could always tell the smoke from the tin from the smoke and flames from the twigs all the time so when the vent did get blocked I couldn't tell despite watching it constantly.

Anyroad, we now have plenty of char for the lads to practice on amd I will doctor a goodly part with KN03 when I have a mo'.

ATB

Tom

 

[Big E]

I made some charcloth at the weekend using half a 100% cotton t-shirt and an old tin my watch came in. I just put a small hole in the tin cut the t-shirt up in to small square and set it on top of the fire. Smoke came out of the hole for ages and when it stopped a flame popped out so I hoked the tin out and just set it to the side to cool(I didn't plug the hole). The charcloth took a spark no problem and I used it to light a feather stick. Success

 

[gregor-scott]

My understanding of the process it is that whatever oxygen is in the tin will very quickly get used up or flushed out, then as the cloth heats up it the volatile fraction of the cloth will come off as a gas- this can be ignited but it won't affect the process. When it stops gasing/ flaming it means there is nothing else to be burnt off. You could cook it longer, or take it out. It didn't matter when I tested it. You can plug the hole with a stick- but the amount of air that could travel through the pin hole won't be enough to let the charcloth burn, so that doesn't matter either. I think the only variable that really matters is the cloth you start with.

Still would be interested to know of anything that can enhance the catching properties of charcloth! - have heard saltpetre mentioned but that is probably hard to come by these days, and I'm sure that would be added after the charring process not before.

Nic

I was at the moot in Salisbury last year and we bought some saltpetre, supposedly you use it to make fuses, so you make a saturated solution and soak your fuse rope or what we did was soak clematis in it to try and make some sort of super tinder, so in theory you could make the solution and soak your tinder, charcloth etc in it, dry it out for ages then it will go like nobodies business

 

[ged]

... I stuck a 1/8th of a inch hole in the lid and stuffed it full of rough cut squares of cloth. Too tightly it would seem...

It's possible that the cloth somehow bunged up the hole but cloth being porous it seems unlikely that you 'd get a good enough seal without something like tar acting as a sealant. My guess is that the fabric produced some viscous fluid which soaked into the cloth around the hole and helped to block it.

I cut a peg to block the hole ...

Why block the hole you've just made? It might make the lid fly off with the pressure building up inside.

I always use a tin with a relatively loose fitting lid. Anything where the lid simply slides on, like some biscuit tins or travel sweets tins. The lid doesn't fit tightly enough to stop gas escaping nor to build up enough pressure to cause any excitement. At least it hasn't so far.

 

[ged]

Still would be interested to know of anything that can enhance the catching properties of charcloth! - have heard saltpetre mentioned but that is probably hard to come by these days...

At a guess you could use ammonium nitrate (readily available as fertilizer) instead of potassium nitrate (saltpetre) but with all these things be aware that you are potentially mixing the ingredients of explosives. Make sure that there is no possibility of accidental ignition (for example the charcloth might still be hot in the middle) when you have mixed an oxidizer like a nitrate with a fuel like carbon!

You can make saltpetre by mixing ammonium nitrate with potassium chloride, which is readily available as a low-sodium salt substitute.

See this Wikipedia article.

... I'm sure that would be added after the charring process not before.

Oh, definitely!

 

[Toddy]

I use a similar tin tbh. I usually find the lid buckles a bit in the heat anyway.

I think it's the cloth itself that is often at fault when the process doesn't work.
So many 'natural' fibres nowadays have treatments that leave them less than ideal for the purpose.
Many dyes are affixed using alum, which itself is used to sparkproof scenery on stages, and modern washing liquids, conditioners and softeners leave traces that inhibit sparks.

I find linen scraps (after I've boil washed them in plain water) old tea towels, similarly treated, and denims seem to work reliably. The best I ever made though was from an old cotton flannalette sheet. I had boil washed it intending to turn it into dusters but used up the hems and scraps in the charcloth tin. Brilliant

I'm eyeing up my lo-salt with a different view now, Ged

For those looking just for the KNO3, saltpetre, the sausage makings suppliers sell it. It's used as a preservative for meat. sausagemaking.org or .co.uk last time I bought some.
cheers,
M

 

[nic.]

At a guess you could use ammonium nitrate (readily available as fertilizer) instead of potassium nitrate (saltpetre) but with all these things be aware that you are potentially mixing the ingredients of explosives. Make sure that there is no possibility of accidental ignition (for example the charcloth might still be hot in the middle) when you have mixed an oxidizer like a nitrate with a fuel like carbon!

You can make saltpetre by mixing ammonium nitrate with potassium chloride, which is readily available as a low-sodium salt substitute.

See this Wikipedia article.




Oh, definitely!

I thought Ammonium Nitrate was even harder to get hold of than Potassium Nitrate, I understood that you had to have a special license to buy it- although that may have been in large quantites,

I was really refering to Ogri's post that suggested that somethings could enhance a cloths' spark catching abilities before it was charred.

Nic

 

[ged]

I thought Ammonium Nitrate was even harder to get hold of than Potassium Nitrate, I understood that you had to have a special license to buy it- although that may have been in large quantites,

You need a licence to import it into the UK in large quantities, but as I understand it not to buy it from a UK seller. There is a voluntary code with guidelines for sellers on selling only to bona fide customers and reporting suspicious requests for supplies. There is a move in the European behemoth to implement a licensing scheme to combat terrorism, but I think it's being resisted on cost grounds. My personal take on it is that if we don't even record thefts of the stuff there's little point controlling who can palce an order. I sometimes see piles of one tonne dumpy bags of it lying around in farmyards.

I was really refering to Ogri's post that suggested that somethings could enhance a cloths' spark catching abilities before it was charred.

At that stage it seems that it's more about getting things out of the cloth than putting things into it. I do a lot of welding. My overalls are pure cotton but they're also flame retardant.

 

[John Fenna]

I have never needed to add anything to pure cotton charcloth to help it along!
I use cotton tea towels from Tescos or similar ( done in a syrup tin in a fire) for my char cloth and it can catch from a single spark. This is what I sell in my Flint and steel sets and use myself.
Adding stuff would be a waste of time effort and money!

 

[RonW]

I tried this charcloth thing myself too, last weekend.
100% cotton, tin with hole in the lid. Waited untill smoking stopped and a small flame appeared at the small hole. Let the tin cool off and tried it. The only thing happening was the cloth glowed when I blew at it quite hard, which was enough to make dried leaves smoke, but that was about it.
Maybe I charred it for too long?

 

[tombear]

Sorry, I should have clarified, the peg was made to block the hole after the tin came off the the fire to stop air getting in while it cooled.

Brittle sounds like there was something synthetic mixed in the fabric, any chance of that?

ATB

 

[ged]

... The only thing happening was the cloth glowed when I blew at it quite hard, which was enough to make dried leaves smoke, but that was about it.
Maybe I charred it for too long?

It sounds like it's not far off right. You might be blowing too hard. There's a definite knack to blowing an ember into life, and if your lung capacity isn't high you're at a disadvantage. Different people might have different takes on it, but I find it best to take a very deep breath and then blow steadily rather than hard. I try to make as narrow a jet of air as I can so that the jet of air lasts longer before I need another breath. You're almost coaxing the ember, you can start to blow harder as it grows bigger. If that isn't too graphic a description.