Finding tinder in wet woods

Aside from bringing your own, or finding birch bark or tinder fungus, how do you find viable tinder in wet woods?

I think that depends on the type of woods you are in, what I mean by that is what part of the US are you in?

No, what part of the US are YOU in?

Seriously, if your knowledge is wider than one area, please share all.

Thanks.

Pine stumps.

I have found that unless I'm in a double canopy or triple canopy jungle, I can find dry tinder by looking under logs or rock outcroppings. Mostly grasses or weeds. Some wood can be scratched under the surface.

I think the situation also depends on what your using to start a fire. A Mg block is going to be harder to spark wet tinder than say a road flare or bic.

First stop around here is a big spruce tree. Underneath you'll find the best tinder around -- fine, dead branches. The only exception is if there has been a (rare) penetrating fog, which saturates the best tinder with amazing effectiveness.

A dead pine tree is another good source. They turn bright red; not hard to spot. In very wet weather, you need at least the sustained heat from a Bic to get them going.

I've heard congealed evergreen sap from a wound is quite effective. I haven't tried it on its own, but worked into a bit of cotton cloth (jeans pocket) or a paper napkin as a wick, it takes a flame readily.

Snow in this part of the world doesn't have much effect. Unlike coastal or Great Lakes snow (mashed potato snow I call it), it's very dry, matching the low humidity. So unless there's been a freeze/thaw it's like blotting paper. With the heat from a Bic, even dry grass buried in dry, powdery snow will usually go.

None of the above is quite fine enough to ignite with a simple spark. Unless it's a modern ferro-whatsit-firesteel, which is plenty hot enough.

Find a stick the diameter of a pencil. Even if that stick is wet (but not completely saturated). Remove the small first-grade style school pencil sharpener from your kit and sharpen away. Use the shavings for tinder (once you've sharpened past the wet outer part of the wood). Same principle as shaving a stick down to its dry inner parts with your pocket knife, but it's easier to end up with very thin and consistant shavings using a pencil sharpener.

shaved wood from a fat wood pine or take the lose bark from a juniper and smash some of it up with a rock and then lay the rest of the bark on top and light with a flint stick,match or lighter.

I have heard cattail heads. I have yet to try them in the rain, but since they grow in water i would guess they will be fine. I used one to light a fire and it worked great, it was late summer/fall.

Morning glories. The weed not the flower, they have pods filled with seeds that have a bit of fluff that makes them float on the wind. You have to break up the fluff into a cotton-like tangle. I have been told I am nuts and it does not work, but I have fashioned a torch to light a bonfire with them.

Jim, are you sure you don't mean milkweed pod seeds (Asclepias) instead of morning glory/bindweed? http://www.pbase.com/salty_one/image/70700472

I guess I haven't wadded enough into a large enough lump, as I find they flash-burn so fast that they're useless.

Conifers: look for those tiny little short dead branches still attached to the tree trunk or the bases of the lower branches, the ones that are about the thickness of a pencil lead. I don't know that they will start with a firesteel, but they work well enough with a lighter. They never seem to be wet, even when it's raining.

Sue

Mature cattail heads catch the slightest spark when you fluff them up. Including the spark from a dead Bic (no butane left) found on the road. I haven't tried them in rain, but they're packed so densely that they probably shed most of the water. They're the finest tinder you can get up here, and the heads are somewhat intact through the fall and winter.

Re pine stump: what specifically do you do to get relatively dry tinder?

You get the pitch wood.

An easy route to see what I mean is find an old one but not decaying and hit it with the pointy side of a pick axe. It should split and you can pull out slivers from 1/4" to probably 1/2" that stuff will light like a candle and burn a good amount of time too... you can also sliver it up and make lil tinder flakes for taking a spark too.

Even in rain on the BC coast I was able to find tinder under outcrops of rock and on the dry sides of cedar trees.
It does not need to be much of an overhang to keep something out of the rain.
Cedar bark usually is dry on the side of the tree and can be shredded enough to catch a spark.

I have also found that grasses can usually be found either growing against something or under a tree sheltered enough to be dry.

I have raided rodent nests for tinder just to see if it worked, and it did. Mice and squirrels shred the tinder for you.

Doug mentioned cat tail heads and that stuff catches like gasoline.
Thistle down is good too.

Some of the lichens can be used, like Usnea species, but I never had much luck with them when it was wet out.

I have had a harder time finding tinder when it is fog and dew than just rain. I am usually looking for stuff sheltered from the rain when I am looking for tinder and foggy dew goes everywhere.

one of the problems with finding tinder in the wet woods is that you become wet looking for it.really--pushing thru the brush or among the trees to find a place sheltered enough to come up with the amount of dry tinder you would need to start a fire,let alone fire wood,is something you better be doing in a full rain suit.in my neck of the woods,Northern Minnesota,i can look around for a minute--yes minute--and come up with a pile of Birch bark that would cook a moose or find nothing but moss covered rotten Aspen.i have made many,many fires on wet days and all that Scout handbook,survival manual advice on looking for mouse nests or under a leaf is for the birds,which is why i always take a fire starter of some/many types.

Lint.

If you're wearing anything cotton - denim, socks, etc. just take out the old trusty pocket knife and start shaving away.

Also, hair can work in a pinch.

If you don’t carry it with you, in general, look up. It is best if you can practice looking for dry material when you don’t need it, so when you do need it you can avoid traipsing around getting wet trying to find DRY tinder!

Look up the side of a large tree, often you can find some dry sections of the tree that may have moss and bark that can be shaved for tinder. Flake off a bit of the outer layer of the bark to get to some dry stuff under it. Then you can look in the shelter of the same tree on the ground. Move stuff around, lift a layer of the material under a tree, or a rock under the same tree. My faves are pine and fir…sometimes the duff will stay dry all year.

Look under the cut-bank of a creek. If there is a good overhang you can often find lots of dry material under there. Moss, leaves, small sticks and lots of dead dry roots (very fine) that all burn well.

+1 on the mature cattails. Love those things. You would be surprised how long they stay dry, even in the wettest weather. You can actually often times see the water bead up on them. (In December in north Idaho, me and a buddy shook about 4 of them loose over a cattle pond. it was raining lightly at the time, and with 1 spark from a bic the whole thing burned across the entire pond in a beautiful wave that lasted about 2 seconds. What a blast of heat! You need to re-pack then together again if you want to actually start a fire rather than a slow explosion.)

Mullein plant. Even well into winter you can often find dry material in a patch of mullein. If it all seems to be wet (don’t forget to check the base) split it open and check the center. Not to mention you would be doing everyone a favor by destroying it

Birch trees. Of course you can peel off some birch park and usually find something dry enough to scrape/shred into tender

Cut/damaged trees +1 for sap. Granted, getting it to light by spark is not easy, but MAN, DOES IT BURN! Examine the injury and see if you can pull off some small bits of dry wood in that area, if it is soaked with sap all the better if you can shave it and it will act like “fatwood”

Pull the bark off a downed tree…inspect all the way around the tree for dry material.

Clumps of grass. Dig down deep, see if you can find something dry.

Treat large Sage /antelope/bitter brush plants like trees. their bark will often flake off to reveal some dry material without damaging the plant, much the same as the pine and fir and birch.

Split open some elderberry…

Milkweed. I think it was mentioned, but worth it again. In Idaho we had one we called milkweed, but I think it is actually Goat's Beard

Thistle...

Sue
That's them. I grew up with them on fences all around my area. They grow pretty fast. It takes a lot of pods (I think I used 6 or more), and i used an old shoelace to bind in a wick-type shape. I learned the hard way to light a pile of cedar and old gas from a ways away. My beard grew back fine. That is what led to building a torch, I can not attest to its length of burn, but I had a good five seconds before the toss.

First I will apologize for posting a wall of text. OK.

So far it is about tinder.
There were quite a few hints. I will add dead wasp nests too.

Canoedogs has a good point. Walking in the wet gets you soaked.
Even if it has stopped raining the brush usually holds a drop of water at each branch tip and at the tip of each leaf. Dew or fog can be as bad for this as rain is.
Walk through brush up to your waist and you get soaked from the waist down. It just gets worse as the brush gets taller.

I am going to go a little off the original topic here.

I would like to mention the next step to the fire which is kindling.
The shredded paper birch shines here. Another good source is the twigs off the lower branches of spruce trees, sometimes the resin out of the blisters on the balsam fir.
These are all full of resins and oils. They burn even if it is wet out.
The lower branches of spruce usually stay dry even in the worst rain. You want the little dead twigs from the size of match sticks up to the size of a pencil.

Once you are at that point old pine cones are full of resin too and burn hot for a long time once they kindle.

The twigs and stuff are still just the start of the fire.
In a lot of places it is the next size up that is the real problem.
Wood of any decent size laying on the ground is likely to be rotten, soggy punky wood. Standing wood is likely still alive and far to green to burn. To burn wet or green wood takes a very good fire already going.

To get decent dry wood for the fire you might need to look for dead branches, standing dead wood or wood that is leaning on something after it fell.

Now here is something else for fire wood.
If you are near where beavers have been working they cut trees down and they flood low areas. They really like poplar and will fall trees over a foot in diameter.
Usually a tree that large stays off the ground in a lot of places. The beavers eat all the bark off it they can reach, so the wood dries instead of going dozy and rotten wet.

Beaver also cut all the branches about the size of your wrist or smaller and drag them to make their lodges, their dams and to pile them under water to eat later, after the pond surface freezes. They seem to cut them into lengths between 4 and 6 feet.
Some shorter, some longer.
The dams and lodges are often peeled wood with mud plastered over them.

When the beaver log out a meadow and move on the mud washes off the lodges and dams. Then the dams quit holding water so these smaller branches become exposed and since they are piled they are usually dry.
Poplar might not be as good as ash, maple or oak as firewood but it still burns nice and does not throw a lot of sparks.

In the areas the beaver flooded you often find standing trees that were killed by being flooded. Often these are black ash, maple, spruce and cedar. The beaver don't seem to like the taste of these as well as they like poplar and alder.
They are usually dry too. Once again because the dams quit holding water most trees like this are easy to walk to in old beaver meadows. Sometimes they are easy to push over because the roots rotted after they were dead.


If you are in a maple woods you sometimes find small dead maples still standing under the larger maples on hillsides. Often the roots are rotted on these and they push over easy. They are small enough to break into shorter pieces and are normally dry.

A warning
Stay away from standing dead birch trees.
Birch bark is waterproof and the trees will rot to a soggy mush inside it. If you touch one of these rotten dead birch the bark can split and the whole thing collapses at once. You could be buried under a ton of rotten and soggy birch punk.

OK, done posting this wall of text.

I know it's the wrong response, but the first thing I thought of after reading that was "If I ever go camping again, I'm taking my bow and a video camera, and look for dead birch trees!"

In my limited wet weather tinder hunts, the best stuff I found was in piles of wind-drifted leaves. After a poke and stir with my hiking staff to be sure no reptiles contested the neighborhood, digging down into the piles led to some dry stuff that I could rub and crumble into dry fiberous tinder.

The best kindling was dry dead stuff still on trees under their needle or leaf canopy and off the ground. Smashing some of it into wooden shards provided an intermediate size of readily burnable stuff.

The best firewood was split and dried around / on the fire. Pitch-laden pines and pinecones got a fairly fast start but oak, madrone, manzanita, or other relatively hard woods lasted longer and created lasting coals. Often dead-falls and wood on the ground was all that could be found of this wood. [We were not in places cutting anything but dead wood was appropriate.]

Sacramento area? I believe you guys live in tinder, or are at least surrounded by it. Reading about the leaves puts things in perspective as to how dry it can be out there. Here, leaves get wet and stay wet most of the time.

Please come by during the fog and rain of winter to enjoy Tinder Fest.

think speed also--that's what the survival kit we are carrying is all about--kit??remember those??--matches,fire starter,candy bar--
i would think that in a real survival situation that looking around for some exotic fire tinder in a wet world,you would not need tinder in a dry one,that hypothermia would catch up with you before you found enough mouse nest and plant fuzz to get a big fire going.but having said that knowing what to look for and giving it a try before had will save time and you will need ever minute.

Ancient pine tree stumps generally catch alight quite easily when whittled down as demonstrated by Ray Mears.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDAtrYTWKAM

Up here in the Pacific Northwet, we use the dead branches off fir and other coniferous trees. These are all dead as fir trees are self pruning and this has been referred to as squaw wood- easily broken off with a quick snap. If it is rubbery, you know it is wet and less than useful. Heavy concentrations of pitch on the trunks of these trees are also useful as this can be scraped off and used with both squaw wood or birch bark, or cattail heads to make something you can start with a ferro rod.

Well at least you shouldn't have trouble finding water then! Here our dry season is just in the summer, not the fall. That you guys have such a long dry season triggered a little light bulb in my head as to one of the reasons why the wildfires are generally much more of a problem there than here.

Hair works. It doesn't light as quickly or burn as long as other things, and there is the smell, but hair is pretty much always with you.

"...hair is pretty much always with you."

Even if you're bald, you can use your knife to shave your legs!

Sue

Anybody ever tried hair as tinder?

Something no one has seemed to mention is in broadleaf woodland you will find wind blown twigs and branches caught up in the branches of trees. These are air dried and even in very heavy rain will only be damp on the outside, they will still snap with a nice sharp snap.

There is often loads of this material available in many thicknesses providing kindling, tinder and fuel. Whilst in Guyana I lit and kept my fire fuelled for the whole time I was in the jungle using this windblown deadfall and it was during the wet season.

Squirrel nests.
http://www.ofnc.ca/fletcher/our_animals/squirrels/Red-Squirrel-nest.jpg

They are usually a blend of grass and leaves. The red squirrels try to use more grass, grey squirrels like to use more leaves.
They are usually too high to reach, but not always.
If you can reach one it is a pile of dry leaves or grass that will fill a wheel barrow and there is a nest of finer fiber in the middle.
Red squirrels seem to like building in spruce trees more than the grey squirrels which seem to like nesting in maples and oaks more.

Do the squirrels also stash nuts on their nests?

No. They normally don't even take food into the nests to eat.
If you look around where squirrels are there are places where they take food to eat it.
They leave large piles of the shells or the cones, all taken apart.
Squirrel stashes are usually in holes, hidden under something or distributed in small caches around their territory. I wish they were easy to find but I have only ever found them by accident or by watching the squirrels making them.
Some squirrel stashes are strange. I saw a spruce tree once with all the branches between 12 and 16 feet above the ground with mushrooms on them. They got into one of my storage sheds once and filled a plastic pipe that was stored up in the rafters with maple keys. The squirrel had stripped the wing and husk off them so it looked like it was full of green peas. They do the same thing in hollow logs or holes in tree trunks.

Back to tinder sources?

Sorry to hijack my own thread; couldn't resist asking.

Does animal hair work as tinder the way human hair is supposed to?

Edit: would put an interesting twist on hunting for tinder!

I believe Richard Pryor and Micheal Jackson did, but with bad endings....

So cruel, So funny, So true.

Hair, wool, fur. toenail clippings are all the same stuff and are generally considered as flame resistant.
With proteins like these the heat to ignite them is high and the heat released by burning them is low. They also form a foamy burned crust as they burn and it insulates them from burning more.
You can burn hair with a flame from something else but usually as soon as the external heat it taken away the hair self extinguished.

You can singe the hair and eyebrows off you face easily enough, but to get hair to really burn you need it full of styling gel like M. Jackson's was or stuff from freebasing coke like Pryor's was.

If anybody has actually used hair, fur, wool or leather as tinder I really would like to hear from them about the conditions and how they got it to burn.

It has come to my attention the hair/fur from a German Shepherd, mixed with lint, burns like crazy but stinks like... well, burning hair.

All our dryer lint is mixed with German Shedder hair due to having two of them, plus a Husky.

Lint is the tinder of last resort around here. It does motivate one to get the fire going, just to kill the burning hair smell.

I assume the lint the hair is mixed with is from cotton clothes.
Clothing lint is something else I find iffy. If the clothes were synthetic or woollens I have had trouble trying to light it but cotton lint takes a spark well.

One tinder nobody mentioned is cedar punk.
Sometimes you find cedar logs or stumps which have had dry rot.
If you break them open you might find dry but half decayed wood. It is very light and porous, it tends to break into cubes. It will catch a spark and smolder. It burns as an ember really nice but does not flame well.
Because it is inside the log it is usually still dry when it rains.