Don't know how they did it!

[dave payne]

i used red cedar bark....shred into small pieces,maybe 2 or 3 times he size of a matchstick and char in a small tin as you would char cloth

 

[Steyr]

Catching that initial spark is the hard part. After that it becomes pretty ... mechanical.

In the northern areas, the Indians were already using Tinder Conch for fire starting when Europeans arrived. This fungus grows primarily on Birch trees. Official name is Innonotus Obliquus. A nickname is Bear Cr*p fungus - because it looks like a bear pooped on a tree! The outside it hard/black and knobby/spiky. The inside is orangish, sometimes with little white specks. Right off of the tree, the inside will catch a spark from a traditional flint striker - without any preparation!!!! Yeah, no pre-charring or soaking in potassium nitrate, or nothing. Just fresh off of the tree. Amazing stuff! It also is hard to put out once you do catch a spark in it.

But starting a fire with tinder conch/fungus is a bit different than with charcloth. You still need that "bird's nest" of dry tinder. But the heat is smaller and more concentrated than with charcloth. It is more like taking a small live coal out of an existing fire, and then coaxing it into flame.

There is a fungus that grows on some pine trees that works pretty similarily. Don't know the name of it.

The other primary way to catch that spark was with charred punky/rotted wood. Take some punky half-rotted elm or cottonwood or other type of wood, and then get it burning in an existing fire. When you have chunks of live coals in that punky wood, knock some off and put them into a "tinderbox" and close it up to smother out those coals. To use them, you then strike your sparks into that charred punky wood. When a spark catches in a chunk, you then fish it out, put it in your "bird's nest", and start your fire like normal. And be sure to close the lid on your tinderbox - to smother out any other sparks that also might have caught. When your supply of charred punky wood is getting low, just char up some more in your fire and put the coals in your tinderbox. Rotted elm and rotted cottonwood work well. Other rotted wood also works - like maple, or even oak.

Occasionally, you can find a chunk of rotted tree that will catch a spark without any pre-charring. It's rare, but occasionally happens. Sometimes everything just works out right. And often a tree right next to it won't work.

Charred punky/rotted wood was one of the primary methods of starting a fire in most areas, and back in the Old Country.

But other things can work. Some people have good luck with thistle down/heads. Some get cattail down/fluff to work. But most still have to pre-char whatever veggitation they use. Most any fungus will catch sparks fairly well after charring - like horse hoof fungus or shelf mushroom. Just bake/char it like making charcloth.

Karl Koster did find one journal entry up around the Great Lakes that talked about the local Indians using the downy feathers on the legs of Eagles to catch that spark! Ummm ... I think I won't try that one.

The other major method was to use amadou. This was a specific layer of material in a shelf mushroom that was soaked in potassium nitrate. The layer is just below the hard outer shell, and before the main "gills" inside. It is often only 1/4 inch thick or less. That layer is almost like felt. You cut it out, and then lightly pound it to help fluff it up. Occasionally you can get it to take a spark as-is, but most then soak it in a potassium nitrate solution. When soaked and dried, it will then catch a spark fairly fast, and then burn fast/hot - a lot like a cross between a cannon fuse and a matchlock slowmatch.

In major cities, amadou was made and sold by street vendors. They got the potassium nitrate by using boiled urine. Even the old Vikings wrote about making it.

Those modern "fire steels" made from ferro-cerrium give off hot enough sparks that you can start many things burning as-is - like dry grass or leaves. That ferro-cerrium is the same stuff as is under the thumb wheel on a modern cigarette lighter. Just scraping it with a hard/sharp edge will give you tons of white hot sparks! Those sparks get hot enough that they can get magnesium shavings/scrapings burning. That's why they make those camping fire starting blocks of magnesium with that ferro-cerrium rod on the other edge.

Just a few humble rambling thoughts to share. Good luck on your fire starting experiments.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

Where/how would they find potassium nitrate back in the day?

 

[Black Hand]

It was manufactured from guano (human and animal). http://chemistry.about.com/od/moleculecompoundfacts/f/Saltpeter-Or-Potassium-Nitrate.htm

 

They got the potassium nitrate by using boiled urine.

Where/how would they find potassium nitrate back in the day?

Did you miss what Mike said above, or are you asking where they got the urine? :haha:

 

[nwtradegun]

read thru and found no mention of a tinder tubes use. they were around 100 plus years before the mountain men. that is what I use and have in my bag.

 

read thru and found no mention of a tinder tubes use.

That's because this thread is about "char cloth". There are other threads about tinder tubes though.

 

[necchi]

Where/how would they find potassium nitrate back in the day?

Manure, Urin, on barn walls where manure lands/expelled and piled up, wet rotting hay or grass cutting.
Leaching is/was by far the easiest way to get KNO3.
Just mix KNO3 contaminated stuff with water, pour the water off on something flat and let it evaporate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate.

Rake your yard and make a pile of leaves an grass, water it down an let it sit for a week, lift up a few layers and you'll see little white powder crystals,
Viola`, Potassium nitrate! :wink:

 

[Wes/Tex]

Good old, "ye whyte effenfe of ye dunngge"! :haha: Though in script print the "F" & "S" were a bit different, by keyboard can't do that! Besides which, one really old source specified the best powder could be made using human urine, specifically, "...ye pysse of ye maydene notte yette knowynge ye manne"...good luck there spanky! :rotf:

 

[Alden]

Dude, that's MY line... Back off!

 

[Wes/Tex]

"Warre is alwayes Physick too stronge"...nanner-nanner-nanner! :blah:

Or:

"And now my frind, here I will end
no moore her will I rite
Or lest I shall some teirs lett fall
& spoyl my Writyngs quite."

 

[coloradoclyde]

A novice does the same thing over and over and after a hundred years is still a novice.

An expert repeats his experimets using varing methods and becomes proficient.

Quote me on that!

 

[Jo]

Hey, well done! I was just thinking about this today. Afterall they had to have a fire to make char cloth in the first place. :hatsoff:
Time for me to go do my own digg'in!

Trust but verify~Ronald Reagan

 

[necchi]

Mike ain't gonna respond to ya,
It is awfull nice of ya to add Cudo's too his post, but he passed away a little more than a 4 years ago.

You'll see that from time to time on the forum.
The Members name will be a shaded grey color instead of the Dark Blue.
He was, and I guess still is a vast source of knowledge when it comes to fire making
He ran a forge and turned out some quality Historic styled Strikers.
click his name and read some of his back posts, :wink:

 

[Jo]

I am very sorry to hear that. He seemed to be very knowledgeable.

 

[Rod Lassey]

Ironically, Mike's website is still up, and is a wealth of information on historically correct firesteels, fire starting, etc.
http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/firefromsteel/

I have the distict honor of owning a couple of Mike's steels, and a few other odds & ends, which he would throw in with the order of one of his steels. No amount of money will pry them from me, nor have I ever come across better firesteels. He certainly knew what he was about when it came to making steels.

Rod

 

[crockett]

There is a lot of area and a long time period under consideration. I think fire starting varied with the time and area. The shelf or tree fungus is documented but to me, it seems like most of the documentation is from the Canadian Rockies- I can't recall a mountain man in Wyoming or Colorado/New Mexico talking about it. Those 1825-1840 Mountain men that went to Taos and New Mexico got introduced to the tinder tube (even though tinder tubes were used in the east/Europe), I remember reading one account of its description and the New Mexicans used them to light cigars (cigarette- corn husks type). I can't recall any mention of char cloth but I have read of accounts of cloth rubbed in black powder and put in the pan of a flintlock pistol. I've read one account of the "bird's nest" of tinder waved in the air and one or two accounts of a tinder box lid being removed and the flint and steel held so sparks fell into this box. I have concluded that back then a tinder box must have held an assortment of charred material- maybe gathered out of ashes at a campfire. I've never read of a mountain man using a magnifying glass or lense- they might may been more of a Canadian thing (HBC).
Even when percussion rifles became the norm I seem to find that flintlock pistols were still pretty common. There is also the seemingly preference among some mountain men for a flintlock rifle. The general thought is a flintlock was preferred because you could pick up a flint from a stream bed. Maybe but I can't recall just finding suitable flint along a stream bed. Mountain men without their firearms tried rubbing two sticks together- no mention of a flint from a stream bed. It's just my thought, but since I've read several times about the mechanism of the flintlock being used to start a fire (Even on the late day Donner expedition) I am thinking maybe it was a very common way to start a fire.
THE PROBLEM
At most Rondy events I think a lot of folks might be uncomfortable with people starting fires with a firearm (might accidentally be loaded). So we have the modern Rondy events influencing us.

 

[Black Hand]

Mountain men without their firearms tried rubbing two sticks together- no mention of a flint from a stream bed.

There appears to be little/no evidence that methods of friction fire were used by whites (or natives) after the introduction of steel strikers.

 

[Rifleman1776]

friction fire

Friction fire starting is very difficult. Even the guys on the survival shows acknowledge that. I have tried. Hands and arms get tired I got out of breath and not a whif to show for it. Easy to understand why a superior technology would be so popular once introduced.

 

[Black Hand]

I've also heard that people in the field were unable to start a fire after the loss of fire steels and flintlocks. This further suggests that the skills for alternative fire-starting methods were not wide-spread.

 

[mccarthy.tf]

I used to shoot stick bows with a guy who could do it with a bow drill in under 5 minutes. He carried the bow, drill, board and tinder with him and practiced alot.