Oooh, a thread of my own. I'm all excited :hyper:
I was out on a tinder gathering wander yesterday (as you do), and found a load of clematis bark, cattails etc. Despite searching every birch I could find, all I could find bracket-fungus wise were polypores (the "razor strop" fungus).
Obviously the clematis bark and the down will fire up beautifully, but in the interest of scientific enquiry (and in frustration at never finding a horse's hoof bracket) I dried and scraped the polypore flesh to a downy fluff and tried it out.
One zap with the firesteel and it caught instantly (thumb-sized powdery mass of fluff) and, err, melted the formica on my kitchen table :yikes: (good job I'm divorced) It also burns like a slow fuse if glowing (not unlike I've seen RM do with horse's hoof fungus, but a tad quicker)
Now I can see how this might be likely, the fruits of fungi are just cellulose, protein and water pretty much, but I was struck by how good it was. Is horse's hoof fungus better? How? Self-igniting? Temperature of the coal?
Am I missing something?
Jim.
I was out on a tinder gathering wander yesterday (as you do), and found a load of clematis bark, cattails etc. Despite searching every birch I could find, all I could find bracket-fungus wise were polypores (the "razor strop" fungus).
Obviously the clematis bark and the down will fire up beautifully, but in the interest of scientific enquiry (and in frustration at never finding a horse's hoof bracket) I dried and scraped the polypore flesh to a downy fluff and tried it out.
One zap with the firesteel and it caught instantly (thumb-sized powdery mass of fluff) and, err, melted the formica on my kitchen table :yikes: (good job I'm divorced) It also burns like a slow fuse if glowing (not unlike I've seen RM do with horse's hoof fungus, but a tad quicker)
Now I can see how this might be likely, the fruits of fungi are just cellulose, protein and water pretty much, but I was struck by how good it was. Is horse's hoof fungus better? How? Self-igniting? Temperature of the coal?
Am I missing something?
Jim.