Charcloth :)

[spiritofold]

Thanks to Tadpole's excellent tutorial i made my own charcloth. Used a lidded tin can and cotton dishcloths.

My mrs had a tin can that had a jamie oliver mug in it, also jamies picture on the can.
He just had to be burnt!

You can just see the smoke starting to wisp out.

I let it all cool down, opened up the tin and as you can see in the last pic, it worked!
Theres a bit in the center that did'nt quite burn, but the rest of its fine. I tried a bit of the cloth with a spark from a swedish firesteel and it took straight away. Well impressed!

Cheers Tadpole

 

[Celt_Ginger]

Great job. There is something satisfying about making char cloth and seeing that it works well. You can avoid the bit in the centre not charring by making your char cloth in smaller batches. I cut mine into strips about 2 inches wide by about 2 foot long and roll these up, then place about 7 or 8 rolls in my tin. It's very unusial to get any un-charred bits that way.

 

[spiritofold]

Cheers for the tip

 

[g4ghb]

nice little tutorial mate - it's a shame Jamie got singed though!

 

[hiho]

nice little tutorial mate - it's a shame Jamie got singed though!

no it isn't

 

[rich59]

I have found that you don't seem to need the stick in the hole at the top when cooling down - not enough air gets in to support burning.

 

[Mang]

Cutting the material into tin sized discs and stacking them ensures a good return but you do get near the point where you are hanging off the cliff of insanity by a single bloodied fingernail when cutting them!

 

[g4ghb]

no it isn't

oops! - I forgot, sarcasm doesn't come across very well in typed text does it!?

 

[spiritofold]

I cant wait to get hold of the fire steel now to try it all out. Funny how you get motivated over such things!!!

One other thing i was thinking about is how you process the birch polypore that you also use to get the flame? Im guessing its slivers that have been dried out?

Is it really that flammable?