Smart Ways To Find Tinder

Sevelx | September 11, 2015 | Fires, Survival

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Finding dry tinder material for a “birds nest” can be very difficult. It might not be as hard to do on a sunny day when you are in good health and you aren’t hungry, but imagine the situation where you had a plane crash, fell and broke your leg or wrist. And if you have a lighter you are already at an advantage. A lighter gives you something that almost nothing else can, a flame.

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There are many ways to find dry tinder, or just tinder itself. That is what I will be discussing in this article – finding the right materials. …………

………. What you want from the cedar is the inner bark. This layer is almost always bone dry. One thing you can do with it is to tear it into thin strips and rub it against each other in your hands. Got an injured hand? Rub the bark on a rough rock…………

If I couldn’t find a cedar tree I would look for a cottonwood. The inner layer of cottonwood bark is good for many things: rope, tinder, and twine are just a few. But in this article it is just the tinder we are concerned about. ……….

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………. If it is raining, where is there a dry place? Caves and large crevasses under rocks. See photo 5. Oftentimes animals will make these spaces their homes. If they have then they picked that spot because it is warm and dry. And that is the perfect place to look for leaves. Oftentimes animals will bring in fluffy things such as cotton or animal fur. All you need to do is look under the rock or cave and pull out a couple of handfuls and there you go – warm, dry, ready-to-ignite tinder. ………..

Char cloth & Bamboo
Char cloth is probably the ultimate tinder. Char cloth is made by putting cotton cloth in a sealed airtight container. A metal water bottle works great. You cut the cloth into pieces about 1″ by 1″ and put it into the container. Make sure no air can get in. Then put the container on a bed of hot coals for about 5 minutes. Take it off of the coals but don’t take off the lid until the container has cooled off. Once it has cooled off, take off the lid and remove the cloth squares……….

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Now on to Bamboo. Bamboo is not a very common resource of tinder but it can be used to some extent. The bamboo itself is not what you want, it is the shavings. Hold your knife at a 90 degree angle over the bamboo and rub it back and forth over it. This should create something that looks like sawdust except fluffier. This is more of a lighter or ferro rod type tinder although it can be used with bow drill, hand drill, and other friction fire methods.

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