Alternative tinder fungi?

[JimH]

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.

 

[Adi007]

I'll have to give that one a try (although not on the formica counter top!). :biggthump

 

[JFW]

Yes I've use the razor strop fungus before for both stropping and as a tinder.

If you find a large polypore cut it into thin pads and dry - you can bond it to a board if you want - this makes a good strop. I'm sure there is a post on here about this or maybe its on British Blades. If you trim the curly bits off your strop board you can use them as tinder either as they are or by crumbling them to a rough powder, takes a spark every time.

Cheers

JFW

 

[eraaij]

This fungus is almost like paper when sliced thin and dried. It ignites very easy from a firesteel and it just keeps glowing. It goes a bit fast though. I pack it in my fire-kit to give me a bit more time from coal to ignition. You can easily get it glowing from the coal alone.

I think this fungus has a medicinal use also - Otzi the Iceman had some with him. It works against intestinal worms, if I am correct.

There are actually quite some fungi that can be used for tinder. The hoof shaped ones that grow on beech and birch are very good, but they need to be YOUNG (this I never saw in any book). These fungi are completely filled with amadou and can be skinned with a knife very simple. After that - just flatten them with a log, optionally rub them with ash and let them dry. Works with flint and steel almost as good as burned cotton.

Just try it.

-Emile

 

[Snufkin]

I've used birch polypore as a coal extender. I keep a dry one in my tinder kit and just shave off thin slivers and place them in the core of my tinder nest. Just tried with firesteel lit up quite well.