In my explorations of tube tinder I decided to find out how small I could go. Having started out with kitchen roll tubes I progessed to toilet rolls, then to smaller paper tubes - stuffed with shredded leaves and twigs and with a powdery coal extender. Some of these were successful, and I noticed that very often the tube itself got involved in the burning early on. I then had the idea of going for the ultimate - a tube so small that only the coal would fit in it, no thicker than my little finger. I tried rolls of paper of different thicknesses. To my absolute amazement some of these would ignite, and quickly. Wow. I found that newspaper thickness was about ideal. Then I moved to birch bark and bark from the paper bark maple. These also worked. Finally I moved to single leaves and these often worked too.
So here is the description of the "cigar" or "match" tinder:-
Materials -
One leaf (e.g. sycamore )
one piece of char cloth - about 3x3cm before folding.
Construction -
Take one dry leaf - but still flexible. A sycamore leaf seems pretty ideal. Remove stalk. Decide which is the straightest edge. The opposite edge shred a little and crumple. The aim of this is two fold - to form at least a partial tinder in the tube when rolled, and also to form an obstruction to the coal blowing out through the bottom end of the tube. (I haven't yet experimented with not shredding.) Then roll into a tube about 1 - 1.5 cm diameter. Tear or cut off one end if it is ragged to make a fairly square end. Wedge a tightly folded piece fo charcloth into one end so it seems secure when blown into. (Or you could insert the char cloth after ignition). Unfortunately coals from bow/ hand drills don't seem to work if substituted for the charcloth as the intense blowing needed causes them to disintegrate.
Operation:-
ignite char cloth and make sure placed tightly into end of tube. Blow intensely into the tube directly at the char cloth twice. The first blow spreads the red glow to all of the charcloth. The second turns it white hot and on stopping the tube itself bursts into flame.
Properties:-
Tiny, easy and quick to construct, virtually smokeless as it goes almost immediately from a coal (smokeless) to flame.
Speed is amazing. Just two blows usually. Probably less than 10 seconds.
Excellent as a party trick, or even to light your cooking gas .
So here is the description of the "cigar" or "match" tinder:-
Materials -
One leaf (e.g. sycamore )
one piece of char cloth - about 3x3cm before folding.
Construction -
Take one dry leaf - but still flexible. A sycamore leaf seems pretty ideal. Remove stalk. Decide which is the straightest edge. The opposite edge shred a little and crumple. The aim of this is two fold - to form at least a partial tinder in the tube when rolled, and also to form an obstruction to the coal blowing out through the bottom end of the tube. (I haven't yet experimented with not shredding.) Then roll into a tube about 1 - 1.5 cm diameter. Tear or cut off one end if it is ragged to make a fairly square end. Wedge a tightly folded piece fo charcloth into one end so it seems secure when blown into. (Or you could insert the char cloth after ignition). Unfortunately coals from bow/ hand drills don't seem to work if substituted for the charcloth as the intense blowing needed causes them to disintegrate.
Operation:-
ignite char cloth and make sure placed tightly into end of tube. Blow intensely into the tube directly at the char cloth twice. The first blow spreads the red glow to all of the charcloth. The second turns it white hot and on stopping the tube itself bursts into flame.
Properties:-
Tiny, easy and quick to construct, virtually smokeless as it goes almost immediately from a coal (smokeless) to flame.
Speed is amazing. Just two blows usually. Probably less than 10 seconds.
Excellent as a party trick, or even to light your cooking gas .
