How do ya make good Charcloth?

[pa woods roamer]

My late Uncle taught me his secret...Men`s Cotton underwear...the ones that are so thin you can read a Newspaper through them...not that I`d want too!!!! Cut em in a square to fit the Char can and let them cook till the smoke stops. The stuff catches a Spark fast!! Don`t know if the residual gassification perminating the cloth adds to the fast ignition or not!!!

 

[ameling]

What you are doing when you make charclothe is converting the clothe into "charcoal". You are driving off all the internal and chemically bound moisture and assorted gasses from the fibers - leaving just the carbon. That carbon will then catch your sparks and burn - becoming your ember/coal.

The more used/washed/worn your clothe, the better the charclothe it will make - either cotton or linen. That "use" of the fabric loosens up the fibers in the threads, and "fuzzes" them up more. All this will make it easier for the sparks to catch in the fibers, and then keep burning.

Since nobody has yet to find any documentation for ... tins ... for making charclothe, Karl K came up with a method of making it that did not use a tin.

Take a long strip of your clothe, and roll it up onto the end of a green stick. Make a roll a couple inches thick. Don't roll it too tight. It should look kind of like you were making a "torch". Now put it in your fire. The outside will catch and flame up. Let it burn a while. When the ouside is well blackened, or glowing red, carefully bury it in the dirt to smother the fire. Leave it buried until you are sure it is completely out. Then dig it up, and clip off the extra stick. The stick through the center helps support your new charclothe. Store it in some sort of leather pouch/container to protect it, but also to keep from getting black soot over everything else.

The outside will now be black, with parts crumbling. This crumbly part has had some of the carbon in it burnt as well - leaving less to catch your sparks. As you start to unroll it a bit, the cloth will still be black/charred, but won't crumble on you. There is your "charclothe".

To use, just unroll a section as long as you need, and tear it off.

As you unroll and use it up, the clothe will start to change color from black to gray to brown. When you get to the browned clothe, it will no longer catch sparks well. When it gets to this level, just ... burn/roast ... it in your fire again to "char" some more of it.

Yes, this does "waste" some clothe. But you don't need any "container" to cook your charclothe in. So this method gets around that issue of no documentation for "tins" for making charclothe in.

The almost complete lack of documentation for charclothe itself is ... another discussion.

Just my humble thoughts to share. Take them as such.

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

 

[musketman]

So guys, tell me some of your secrets for methods and materials!

I use old, worn-out blue jeans cloth for my char, it cooks up well and catches a spark easy...

As for my method, I use an old (one pound) candy tin can, like christmas candy comes in with a small nail hole in the center of the lid...

The cloth is loosly packed and the char is allowed to fully cool before I open the can to prevent spontaneous combustion...

 

[HFD60]

I use my recovered roundball patches(pillow ticking), they char very nice and seem to catch a spark very quick...

 

[omarick1948]

Thanks alot everybody!...I've did some of these, but discovered some new idea's through your help and suggestions. I know this subject has been addressed on the forum before, but there seems to be NEW answers!....I always know that I can count on our members, BUT also learn something new everyday. I guess for those who think a thread topic is getting old. Not really, as my main goal in life is to get OLD!

Thanks all, :hatsoff: :thumbsup:
Rick

 

Rick,

All great info here. Let me just add: those 1 qt. tins for making char are great for around the home, and you can Char a good quantity. If youre on the trail then those smallest of altoid tins (about 1&1/2"x3"), with a small hole punched in the lid (with an awl) will give you a small carry tin, and the ability to make char away from home. i keep one in my shot pouch (i got the flint&steel on my gonne) :thumbsup:

 

[Sunkmanitu Tanka]

Hi all from Belgium... :hatsoff:
I read this article with much interest and learned a lot.... I use worn out Jeans since years and it works a charm!
Recently however I read the books of Mark A. Baker, you know, the longhunter, and he put in an interesting article about the scarcity of cloth, linen, wool etc... in the old days, and that he started to use punkwood instead. I tried that and it works great! Used it lots of times lately!
Making char is fun to do on a rondy.... that and casting bullets!
regards to you all!
Sunkmanitu

 

[bajabuc]

Altoids boxes haven't changed in shape or design for 200 years. By all means use one...and take it in your possibles bag...it's period!!!

 

[MSW]

cool photo, BountyHunter... thanks... i've ben trying to explain this to one of my kids (i suspect she sees me as really that old)... i do the same deal in my fireplace but i use an old 35mm bulk film can (yes, perhaps i really am that old- remember 35mm film? sometimes i don't shoot PRB... sometimes i shoot 35mm or even 60x70 or 645 or even- dare i confess- 4x5 sheet film)

i used a nail for a bit but then ground the end smooth for a better seal after i had a can 'brew up' on me one day .. perhaps i was impatient, but now i have a near machine tight seal and i get good charclothe every time.

 

[ameling]

One additional note:

Charclothe is best made in small batches in a fairly thin container. The reasons? As you are heating the container up to "cook" the stuff inside, the internal temps will vary from just inside the tin wall and down in the middle of you pile of clothe. So the outsides of the pile of clothe start to char first, while the center is still unchanged. As the heat progresses deeper into your pile of clothe, the outsides can start to go past the best point in getting charred, and start to burn up the carbon in the fibers - the stuff you actually want. So by the time most of your pile of clothe has been charred enough, the stuff on the outside will be black/crumbly, and the very inside might still be just brown.

So use a smaller container. Try to have it be more flat/thin than round. And pack your clothe in loosely, and in a random pattern - jumbled.

To give you a better way to understand what might be happening, just look at how a newspaper or magazine burns when tossed on a fire. The outside edges burn right away, but the inside parts take a long time. Those "layers" tend to insulate themselves. But if you crumple up the pages and toss them in individually, the burn right away. The layers of clothe inside your container work the same way to "insulate" those below/behind them.

So making small batches of charclothe in small containers works better, and gives you better charclothe.

Altoids tins haven't changed in 200 years? That's an interesting statement. Any source of documentation for that claim?

Yes, ... some ... tinned containers did exist in the early 1800's. But the style/shape of them, and the methods of construction, was different. As in they were made up from small pieces tabbed/soldered together, or with hand-crimped seams. Drop-press molded tin pieces came along much later. And all those Tinners hand-cranked machines only really started to made and used in the 1840's and later - with most in the late 1800's on into the early 1900's. So tin containers like those Altoids tins just didn't exist in the early 1800's. Unless you have found some new documentation. If so, a lot of people would really like to see it - especially a whole bunch of tinsmiths. As with all things historical, the "devil is in the details".

Just my humble thoughts to share, and best used in conjunction with your own research.

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

 

Mike,
Good pts. i never really thought about it. tho i only use my little tin, with its thin walls.
btw, ive tried to burn that little altoids tin up time and time again. that thing is tough! and makes good char :v

 

[Emet Huntsman]

I have several Altoid boxes (Japaned) that I carry in my possibles bag to hold small items that get lost too easily if loose -- spare flints, fire kit, cleaning jag, etc. Thanks for the dating info :hatsoff:

 

[ameling]

I've got 3 or 4 altoids tins floating around that I use. They work great for making charclothe. And are pretty handy for storing it in.

But I never tell anybody that they are historically correct for any time period before the late 1800's. And if questioned, I also tell them we can't document the ... common ... use of charclothe to before the Civil War. It just wasn't written down before then. And original artifacts containing charclothe just haven't shown up - other than the tinder tube and the old matchcord for touching off matchlocks and cannons.

Use of scraps of valuable clothe to char and catch sparks to light a fire just wasn't commonly done, nor written about. Especially when other things were cheaper to make/use and more available. Charred chunks of wood were commonly used and show up in many original "tinderboxes". And the use of tinder fungus across the norther parts of North America is well documented from very early times.

Charclothe itself just ends up being that tricky little "detail" that is so hard to pin down and document.

As they say, the "devil is in the details".

But I still love my altoids tins!

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

 

Mike,
How right you are :thumbsup: Punk wood is fairly ready around these parts.

a true faux pas? try some #00steel wool!
But, that's cheetin.
:v

 

[bajabuc]

has anybody ever tried the eastern..as in China, Siam and like that...compression lighter? I have one. works great. It's a thickwalled hardwood stick with a hole drilled in it. there's a dowel that fits in the hole and is pretty much the same size as the hole. Some kind of tinder is placed in a carved cup in the end of the dowel. The dowel has a handle. Grease the dowel...the natives used vegetable oil..place the dowel in the hole of the stick and force the dowel down into the hole. The compression heats the tinder to glowing and you can start a fire with it. The first one documented was in the 1400's but it's much older than that. Maybe more than 800 hundred years old. I wonder where mine is?
The information is on the internet. Compression lighter. BTW..an engineer in Montana made mine...he made my atlatl too.

 

[bajabuc]

One of the first jobs the apprentice gunsmith had to do was MAKE his tools. Files, screwdrivers, thread blocks, saws, hammers, vices, boring machines, reamers, riflers and the rest of the tools needed to make a flintlock rifle...he didn't go buy them, he made them...(Foxfire 5)
Consider self hinged patch box lids on Kentucky rifles...consider one piece formed nose caps. Now consider a wood mold with a press that forms the box...a lever press...the lever has been around for a long time. The hinge part...and the rolled edge around the top of the main container. is easy to make with a wood or metal vise and a round rod. Lay out the metal...it's very thin..cut the shape...roll the edges and the hinge...put the sheet metal over the female mold..place the male shape on the sheet. Press with the lever. The very act of pressing the thin metal will put small ridges on the corners and strengthen the container part. Make the top the same way...you have the box. If gunsmiths can make a selfhinged patch box and one piece formed nosecaps they can make a metal box. One could make a lot of them very much alike by using the same male and female molds over and over. the lever press...sometimes used as a spiral lever in the shape of a screw has been used for centuries. I'm not seeing any difficulties here. Printing presses were done with a spiral lever for centuries. Nope...not seeing why not and one piece metal pressed boxes have been made in China and Japan for thousands of years.
We seem to think that it's just not possible for "primitive" people to make the things they used every day. The "tinker" made pots and pans out of thin sheet metal and a series of hammers and a small anvil. Hershel House said that many flint locks were mass produced by the hundreds if not thousands in England and shipped to America and sold to Gun Makers "Foxfire 5". Tin boxes for small spare parts are found in boxed sets of dueling pistols and they're not soldered
together.

People didn't cook over open fires without metal pots and pans and soldered together ones would melt the soldered joints and leak.

Nope...don't see a problem with small hinged metal boxes. Not at all.

 

[ameling]

That "compression lighter" is also called a Fire Piston. There is a current message thread discussing it, as well as several past threads.

The knowledge/technology to make small "tins" using top/bottom dies/molds did exist. But what has not been commonly found are actual tins that might have been made and used, or descriptions of them, or lists of goods with them on. Some fancy/expensive "tins" can be found, like those containers in boxed pistol sets. But not of simple ones for ordinary use. That's the sticky point - lack of documentation or original "common/inexpensive" artifacts until you get well up into the mid and late 1800's.

Cooking pans/pots/kettles with soldered bottoms and side seams have existed and been used for a number of centuries. When using them over a fire, you just don't "boil them dry" and the solder will remain right where it is. There have been a number of journal entries found where somebody complained about somebody else ruining a kettle by not keeping liquid in it over the fire, and having the soldered joints fall apart or start leaking.

Just my humble thoughts to share, and best used in conjunction with your own research.

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

 

[xxgrampa]

hey 'airy,

think the 'altoid container' went back 297 1/2 years with out a change.
then this year, those rascals started stamping 'ALTOID' on the top lid. for me, the romance with the container was gone.

..ttfn..grampa..

 

[yoda1624]

I went to a black powder shoot recently and collected quite a few pieces of patches from the shooting range after the shoot. They work well. I avoid clothing other than jeans because it is very hard to find cloth that is thick enough to hold together after charing. The empty paint can with the nail works best for me with the patch cloth.

One hint I read online is to point the vent hole toward the fire that you are using to heat the can and it will burn off and not smell. I just turn mine hole down on the side burner of my gas grill. Once the flame start flickering, it is done. Put the nail back in and leave it overnight.

 

[ameling]

I know that Altoids the candy go back a long ways. But the tin? Almost 300 years? If you could point me to the place this is documented, I would greatly appreciate it, as would many others. Finding good documetation for ealy tin containers is very hard to find.

Thank you.

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