I was out playing with a frensel lense this afternoon and tried it out on a few types of tinder that I had laying around the house.
By far the best was a piece of char cloth. It took less than three seconds to get an ember once the lense was focused correctly.
I tried Tinder Quick and it did not work at all. I tried char cloth once again to see if it was me but the char cloth went up in less than three seconds again.

Last weekend I was at Damascus Trail Days in Va and there was a youth related outdoor school using bow drills and flint and steel to make fires. The char cloth was key in getting a fire with flint and steel. They aslo used it at times to nurse the ember from the bow drill set ups.

While not waterproof char cloth is by far the best material I have seen to land even the smallest spark onto if you want to start a fire. I have seen the tiniest spark from a flint and steel turn into a glowing ember and then a fire when using char cloth.

I wonder what methods the pioneers and Mtn Folk used to keep their tinder dry without plastic bags and such?

Can you explain "char cloth" a bit? I imagine a half-burnt T-shirt or something.

They sometimes used a waxed leather wallet or a small waterproof tin like the ones that #11 percussion caps come in.

Half burnt blue jeans to be exact.

Char cloth is pretty much smoldered cotton. It never actaully catches fire. The end product catches the slightest of sparks.

Old school tinder.

"...I wonder what methods the pioneers and Mtn Folk used to keep their tinder dry without plastic bags and such?..."


Many used a tinder box , some with a "burning glass" in the lid...

Just curious:

I notice a lot of cotton T-shirts and jeans are actually 30-40% polyester.

Has anyone noticed a difference in spark-catching ability between "pure" vs. "blend?"

In my very limited experience, and from what I have read, if it is not pure cotton it doesn't work nearly as well...

Ok, let me repost my tutorial from Survival HQ, SERE International...



Lets do this the way that I first did it, because it works, is clean, fast, cheap, and simple...

Get old 100% cotton(vital!!!) t-shirt.
Cut about 6 to 10 1.5"x1.5" squares...
Stack them neatly on top of one another.
Set them on a square of aluminium foil about 6"x6".
Fold the foil around the cloth tightly and crimp tightly around the edges...
Take a needle and punch a small hole in the top of the stack, NOT all the way through...
Hold IN open flame... I use kitchen tongs for this...
Smoke will start pouring out of the hole...
Despite some recommendations to the contrary, I prefer to let the smoke ignite...
When smoke plume stops burning, give it another 8 to 15 seconds in the flame and then remove it from the flame...
Do NOT open it yet... In a normal container, you must wait quite some time before opening it, because the heat will cause the charcloth to spontaneously burst into flames as soon as the air hits it... This is not QUITE so important with the foil method(and such a small batch), because, the whole thing will cool off in a minute or two...That is one of the reasons to start out this way... Nearly instant satisfaction!
Unwrap, and enjoy!!!

If you are right handed...
Try holding the flint in your left hand(palm up) with a piece of charcloth on the left side of the flint, RIGHT along the edge... Hold the steel in you right hand (with the curve down to protect your fingers) and strike down FAST(not hard) the edge of the flint should direct the burning metal(in a real flint and steel, it is the steel that does the sparking) right into the charcloth...

When you get a spark in the charcloth, you will not think much of it...
It will just be a little speck glowing dimly on the cloth...
But, if you blow gently(so as not to blow it away, the stuff is lighter than a feather), it will get very bright and radiate a lot of heat...
The idea, it to put the charcloth in a tender bundle, and blow into that, it will then ignite the fine stuff in the center, which will then ignite the bigger stuff around it, and it will burst into flames... The first time you see it done, you will be surprised at just how fast it goes from nothing into a ball of flame... I am very glad I saw someone do it before I did it, because I would have thought it would just start with a little flame licking out of the top of the tender bundle... It is often anything BUT a little flame!!! Sometimes it even makes a little 'whoosh' sound as it bursts into flame...
You then(QUICKLY) transfer the tender bundle from your hands(by this time, you will not need ANY coaxing to do this! ) to your fire lay...

There you have it...
It is a LOT easier in practice, than describing it...

Char cloth is pretty much waterproof... By that, I do not mean that it will work when wet, but that if it GETS wet, it does not destroy it... You can just let it dry out and it will work again.

I have that one, and it is very nice!

I have read that, in order to make good char cloth, you need cotton that has NOT been treated with any chemicals to make it flame-retardant. This means no T-shirts. Does this sound familiar?

A regular old T-shirt being flame-retardant is a new one on me. I have made a little bit of char cloth from a T, and it burned just fine...

Colour is important with a lens. If the char cloth was black, it will have adsorbed more of the light energy, which is part of why it will have been successful. White cloth reflects light. Similarly if you are using newspaper - the black print will work better than the white page.

Tinder Quick is light-coloured, and I think it can also be hard to focus on. However, in my experience it works fine with sparks.

I've been experimenting trying to create a home made dry replacement tinder for the cotton balls, coleman white gas and used shoe polish tin tinder. So far the specification I am looking for would go along the following lines,

1) The tinder once ignited should burn for more than 2 minutes with a substantial flame.
2) The tinder should be reasonably waterproof before being used.
3) The tinder should ignite from from the sparks produced by a Swedish firesteel or even a flint and steel.
4) The tinder should ignite using a frensel lens.
5) The tinder once exposed should have an indefinite life time unlike the wetfire tinder.
6) The tinder should be of a similar size to Tinder Quick.

The ingredients so far include Char Cloth, Cotton wool, candle wax and powdered hexamine. This is how I have proceeded.

Crush the Hexamine tablet to a fine powder. Spread the powder onto a warmed metal copper plate and poor melted candle wax on the plate and powdered hexamine to just cover the hexamine powder. Partially dip small strips of Char cloth in to the melted wax and hexamine leaving a portion of the char cloth dry. Some of the hexamine will adhere to the char cloth with the melted wax acting as a binder. Wrap a cotton wool ball around the dipped char cloth strip. The cotton wool will adhere partially to the waxy hexamine char cloth strip. Once the wax has hardened inside the cotton ball together with the char cotton hexamine impregnated strip inside it can then be used a tinder. Store in a small polybag.

Any other ideas for tinder?

I'm curious as to how effective my test batch of "char cloth" that I made will be. I made some with paper towel instead of cotton cloth recently. It's nearly pure cellulose, just like cotton, but it's thinner. I was thinking it might work better; it looks pretty similar to normal char cloth. Unfortunately, offhand, I don't have a good way to try it -- no flints at my house. Burns with a nice even, steady wavefront, but I'm not sure of a good way to test how readily it will catch a spark. I've been brushing up a bit on bow drill practice lately, but haven't gotten a coal yet (too much slipping; time to work some more on the bow and spindle), so I can't tell how well it would ignite from that.

Any ideas?

I guess you could take a cigaretter lighter and drain the fuel, then use the sparker to try to ignite your "char paper" stuff...

It's not absolutely necessary to drain the fuel out of a bic-lighter or such. But what you really need to do, to get it sparking right, is to remove the metal guard from the front side (just grab its sides from the wheel side and bend open, it'll fall apart). The fuel will ignite, right, but the flame will go up, and the sparks will fell down. Just watch your fingers

Thanks; I'll give it a shot.