Correct birch bark for fire starter?

[C_Claycomb]

I am putting another vote in for some kind of ornamental birch, not just young silve birch. Although young silver birch can be reddish I have not seen it be that red, at that diameter, over that length, and be that willing to peel such a thin layer.

i have had similar difficulty lighting ornamental paper birch bark straight from a spark. The smooth, continuous surface seems to just shed the spark before it can heat that spot to combustion. Shredding and crumpling helped. Conversely, it was MUCH easier to light with a match than the silver birch.

 

[Robson Valley]

Oh. "spark-lit". I would find that very difficult to do. Shavings off a magnesium bar then sparks is 30 seconds or less.
Not many people here will strip bark off one of our magnificent paper birch trees. The cosmetic insult is really unsightly and that never disappears.
It's easier to take handfuls of inner resinous dead twigs from a conifer and beat them to soft fine fiber with a rock.

 

[Toddy]

I don't think that's silver birch. The tree is a weed here, I regularly pull out over a hundred seedlings from my garden every year. It doesn't produce that paper thin peeling bark. It's bark is thickish and as it ages it splits. It's not cold enough long enough here for it to form the thick leathery inner bark that the trees further north can do. At that stage one can often find thin slivery curls of bark peeling off, but they're almost white, not red.

That said, there are dozens of cultivars of the birches, if that tree came from a garden center, no idea what variety it is.

M

 

[Robson Valley]

I looked them up in Farrar: Trees In Canada. We have half a dozen different birch species in the west. Probably 3+ in the mountains where I live.

The juvenile bark is thin, dark brown with conspicuous lenticels and deciduous. Very little waxy suberin so I'd never expect it to burn well at all.
They all show the mature bark as multilayered and white on the environmental surface, pale brown and very waxy for the inner layers.

Your silver birch is Betula pendula and I read that it is planted in Canada as a landscape ornamental. Like we don't have any?

The most recently built and launched birch bark canoe that I know of got wet less than a month ago in Prince George, BC.
Highly purified "betulin" from birch bark is showing promise as a topical treatment for skin cancers.

 

[Toddy]

A silver birch woodland is a very beautiful place though
Our overcast skies can make woods rather dark, but at times it's almost as though the silver trees shine with light in the gloom.

I only weed out their seedlings because if I didn't I wouldn't be able to get out the front door in a year or two. There are dozens of them within a hundred metres of my home, and they seed incredibly prolifically. At times I can sweep the paths and fill a bucket from the seeds alone.

M

 

[Janne]

Is the sap sweet-ish, like on a proper Silver Birch?

Birch woodlands are my favourite. Always beautiful, year round.
+

I specially love the arctic version, with the bent, convoluted trunks.

There is a disease/problem, where those arctic birches get a red-brownish bark. The wood underneath is darker, greyer, than the wood under the white bark.

Very common.

 

[Monikieman]

If you're struggling for silver birch, McDonalds drive throughs (In Scotland anyway) seem to use the same species of silver birch. Nice thin papery bark skin.

If your bark lights with a match and produced black smoke then I suppose its got oils in it.

I managed to pick up some birch bark recently on Shetland, some of it 3mm thick. A wee bit research id's it as coming from Canada. So, the oil if present isn't lost at sea!!

 

[Toddy]

Is the sap sweet-ish, like on a proper Silver Birch?

Yes we tap two of the huge big ones that grow along side our lane fence. The sap tastes sweet straight from the tree, not sweet/sweet, but it's definitely got sugar in it of some variety. It boils down to a pale honey coloured syrup.

M

 

[Robson Valley]

We put some of our paper birch bark under water with a rock for 6 months.
Because of the waxy suberin, the lighting qualities do not deteriorate.
There's a destructive distillation process which condenses as a pitch but nothing such as an oil.
Easier and far faster to seal a canoe with spruce pitch.
You can take all you want off the trees in my front yard. They bleed pitch like crazy.

In British Columbia, the Quesnel district, specifically, there is a substantial birch syrup industry.
Nice smokey taste like the smell of the burning wood & bark.
Trees no more than 8" diameters are the biggest sap producers (without killing the trees.)
Pretty much the same taste as the birch syrup which is made in the Russian Far East = Kabarobvsk Krai.

 

[Janne]

Very common sweetener in northern Fenno Scandia in the past. Plus they even fermented it, to make a kind of beer, together with other plants and herbs.

 

[Robson Valley]

Probably european immigrants, they often settled in big groups in whole districts.
Must have been common knowledge all across into Siberia.
Does not seem to have come across Beringia with the First Nations.
So I'll guess fire starter but not sap & syrup. I've had birch wine. Serious skull cramps.

The bark, ripped into very thin strips, is superior fire starter, even when wet.
I'd wait and try for the much thicker and waxy true mature bark.
Spend some time separating the layers. Tedious to say the least. Doesn't matter how you store it.
The sweet sap makes the wood rot very quickly in the forest but absolutely nobody eats the bark.
We can find "tubes" of bark with the wood gone = fire starter.

 

[Hammock_man]

I also have not had much luck lighting birch bark from a ferro rod. Once it is going mind it is a great fire lighter. I used to get mine to light by covering it in thistle down. Had a lovely big jar of it, went back to get some more the next year and the whole area had been cleared. Now use a bit of jute string to catch the spark and get the bark started.

 

[Janne]

I used a wooden mallet to separate the bark, carry it in a resealable and air tight plastic container.
It was a 'second option' to if I could not collect the very thin, flaky birch bark, like if in rain.

Birch wood burns well even if harvested from a living tree. Fantastic when dry.

Tree sap syrup: I believe it was the First Nations that did concentrate the Maple syrup, correct?

But now we are off on a tangent again...... We are expert, us on the other side of the Atlantic!

 

[Robson Valley]

If I'm really careful on a log, I can make shallow knife cuts to get the birch bark peeling in useful thin layers.
Doesn't matter what I do, I can't see spark-lighting as any thing convenient.

Google "Birch Bark Biting" as an art form. That's a better use by far. But oh boy, is it expensive!

For the entire eastern 1/2 of North America, it is fair to call the First Nations peoples as the "birch-building" culture.
Maple sap has a higher sugar content, recognized since the species was named Acer saccharum.

 

[Janne]

Interesting art form!
Can never be practiced in UK.
NHS dentistry not good enough!

 

[Robson Valley]

Not with the UK Silver Birch, that's for certain. The needed bark quality is rare, even in Canada.
One Prince George BC native artist, Angelique Leclerque, travels more than a thousand miles east for birch bark.
The finished sheets are not much thicker than your average sheet of paper.
I've got a Dragonfly and a Butterfly of hers.

 

[JamPan]

I've never got UK silver birch to catch a spark, however fine I've shaved it, even if it's bone dry. It's been okay as the secondary once something else caught. Next time I'll have a go at literally grinding it into dust as per advice further up the thread.

 

[Stew]

I've never got UK silver birch to catch a spark, however fine I've shaved it, even if it's bone dry. It's been okay as the secondary once something else caught. Next time I'll have a go at literally grinding it into dust as per advice further up the thread.

Can I ask what you are using o make the sparks? Ferro rod or traditional flint and steel?

 

[juliojordio1983]

I must be a dab hand with my ferro rod then, silver birch bark is all I need to start a fire! Infact, as a little personal challenge, I now refuse to take a lighter with me, and all I have incase of an emergency situation is some stormproof matches. I do sometimes make some Fatwood curls and mix them in with the bark in my tinderbox for during the winter, but they tend to kick in once the bark catches a spark, and help generate a nice hot flame to build upon, when twigs and small branches can be damp.

I still insist that Silver Birch Bark, whether taken from a living tree or dead branch, is the perfect tinder. There's a big Silver Birch in Stanley Park in Blackpool, which is where most of mine comes from, it is covered in the little wispy bits of the very outer layers of the bark, all they need is rubbing between palms, and I'm good to go.

I also remove some birch bark from kiln dried birch logs we buy for the firepit in the garden and save that for 'Long Fires', the bark on those is about 5mm thick, I have no ideas where they come from, but it must be bladdy cold!

Edit to add; I did find that practice does indeed make perfect with the ferro rod, I struggled for a while when I first used it. Not producing sparks, but being accurate with where I place them.

 

[Toddy]

Thank you I thought I was the only one who managed it. Those tiny wee fine wispy bits of bark, made up into a nest do take a spark from a ferro rod.
The sheets of almost crisp and shiny stuff the OP showed though; those are more difficult. Well, I find them more difficult. I usually crumple some up and then use more as a wrap around to blow to flame.

M