Alternates or Substitutes for Charcloth

[Lloyd]

The date was early fall 1974, the place was high in Oregon's Three Sisters Wilderness Area somewhere around 8000 ft. above sea level, at the edge of the timberline., the time was that long period between when the sun goes down and it gets dark in the high country...

I discovered that I had left my flint and steel and tinder behind...
It was going to get well below freezing that night and a heavy dew was settling in and I was already feeling the cold... My partner who had tagged along with me didn't have anything to start a fire with, because he knew that I always took care of that...

Knowing that I had to do something, or else go back to the trail head and drive home to get my firestarting kit, I got to thinking.

At that time, I was not carrying a flint gun, but had a percussion Hawken... So I decided to try that...

It was loaded, so I fired the load out of it. Then I put about 45 or 50 grains of powder down the bore. On top of that, I put a cotton flannel cleaning patch. I capped the rifle and fired it into the air.. There was a mass of sparks flying out of the muzzle of the gun, and the patch was blown to pieces....

I rethought the problem and took another patch and rubbed it well with powder, then I loaded about 8 to 10 grains of powder and fired once again.. Paffittttt.... out came the patch flying about 20 feet in the air and glowing with several sparks... I caught it before it hit the ground and put it in my birds nest... Blew on it and "fire" was able to get some dry sticks ignited and then catch some larger wood... We stayed warm that night, but had to make sure that our fire didn't go out... The next morning, the rest of our party arrived at the site, so we had plenty of firestarting equipage from then on...

Since that experience, I have made sure that I always carry two or three strike-a-light kits whenever I am out in the woods or desert... I generally have one in my pocket, another in my shooting bag, and another in my bedroll. I don't like being cold in the high country...

[jbtusa]

Mitch: Yes there was lots of cloth on the frontiers and out with the western beaver men, but, did you notice the prices? Whew... I really doubt that they burned a lot of cloth except on occasion. But I'm sure that they did use charcloth, but not as an every day routine.

It's the deafening lack of documentation about charcloth whereas there are many references to punky and rotten "spunge" and tinder fungus. Same goes with tin boxes or tinder boxes, there's just so little documentation.

I suppose what they did for fire was so routine that no one wrote it down. Like one day people will wonder what we did before calculators. (Slide rules, of course.... but what are they? No documentation!)

[Mitch]

to the "tin box" thing...I know a few folks who use wooden boxes for firemakings(not to char anything!!) and a few who use a leather or canvas bag for the firekit....I believe the tin boxes we use/see today weren't even around yet? any thoughts? little tin cans are a great item, but is it right?....

[Chuck Burrows]

Mitch - there is a listing on the 1836 RMO list for Fire Steel Boxes

It's the deafening lack of documentation about charcloth whereas there are many references to punky and rotten "spunge" and tinder fungus.

If there really are that many references please provide exact references for those listed especially tinder fungus - that does show up in Great Lakes references, but I can't remember any for the Rockies???
Again I do not believe you're not going to find references to charcloth in period (see above) so looking for it is akin to looking for other more modern terms which just plain show up......what you will find is tinder and that is used fairly often so that deafness is not perhaps so resounding as might seem. Just think of it like the word jeans as so often used today to describe any brand or style of denim work type pants - I'm betting in the future the material culturists will be arguing over that detail - i.e. were they Levis, Wranglers, or any of several dozen different names - without further description/info it's just not possible to define the point to the nth degree.

regarding tinder here's one example G. F. Ruxton 1846 - you''l not he mentions both tinder and punk as separate items, both with the intended purpose:
"Fire making is a simple process with the mountaineers. Their bullet pouches always contain a flint and steel and sundry pieces of punk or tinder and pulling a handful of dry grass which they screw into a nest they place the lighted punk in this and closing the grass over it wave it in the air when it soon ignites and readily kindles the dry sticks forming the foundation of the fire.
NOTE: here's a good example how words can change meaning - in Webster's 1828 dictionary punk is listed as describing a loose woman aka prostitute yet by 1846 Ruxton was using it to describe a fire making material. In 1828 the term spunk is listed as the fire making material and IMO punk was most likely a shortened version - of course today spunk has a completely different connotation, one not used in polite company such as this

As for the high cost of cloth? Just what lists are you looking at - Yes some cloth, especially woolens were expensive, but than again wool was and is not generally used as tinder (although I've found that the fluff of wool can be used when lightly charred or just well dried).
On the other hand materials which are commonly used to make tinder such as cotton, osnaburg, linen Russia Sheeting (hemp) and even finished cotton shirts were relatively inexpensive. In 1832 for instance there is a listing of 1.5 yards of cotton - osnaburg the price was $.25. Secondly cloth also tended to wear out so one often had a fair amount of scrap - a couple of worn out knee length shirts of the period are more than enough to provide a bunch of tinder. Other worn out cloth sources are pack cloths which were usually made from linen, osnaburg, or hemp.

As to using it everyday - it all depends on where you were and what you were doing - in camp fires were made and generally kept going full time so there was not need to be using tinder of any kind all that much.
No brag just fact as Will Sonnet used to say - In the 1970's after making a good sized chunk of cash I decided to live as close as possible to the 1830's mountaineers as possible and use only materials documented for the period with the exception of things like canvas for my lodger rather than buffalo hides and a couple bottles of my favorite corn whiskey. I wound up spending about 11 months living the life so to speak. I started out with two cotton calico shirts - one lasted about 3 months and the other 4 months, they got turned into tinder and patching material and that along with the 3 yards of linen I had started out using for patching lasted that 11 months with spare left over. Large amounts of tinder just aren;t all that necessary if you keep a fire going when possible and along with a looking glass which I used more than I did the flint and steel as long as the weather cooperated. Like Lloyd I also carried more than one set of fire making equipment: one in a belt pouch, one in camp, and another in my shot bag.

Two things to cogitate on:
1) Most mountaineers were company men and often went into debt to supply themselves, most probably never expecting to or planning to pay it back.
Examples: After Pierre Tevanitagan (sp?) for whom Pierre's Hole is named, was killed the HBC leader of the Snake River Expedition noted that he had left a large debt behind, but he had left some property behind in Canada which they could attach to pay off the debt.
When Jim Beckwith left the RMF to go live with the Crows signed a note for over $200.00. Also most mountaineers traveled in groups of various sizes so even when traveling it was most often the camp keepers and not the trappers themselves who were lighting fires. Brigades in fact often carried enough extra gear to re-supply their members with - when the Crows cleaned out the RMF brigade under Tom Fitzpatrick, they tracked down Bridger's brigade to re-outfit themselves.
2) Perhaps most important of all is the fact that the ability to make fire in a survival situation is a matter of life and death, so why would one scrimp and save on something so important to one's well being, especially when a more than sufficient amount of cloth could be purchased for the price of one beaver?

Yes other materials were used such as punk or charcoal, but to say that tinder made from cloth was little used is IMO taking a very narrow view of the period.

Anyway enough for tonight - I've got shot bag to finish up....

[Rod]

Well, there were tobacco boxes around----the oval type with the burning lense (in steel, not brass) was a standard HBC trade item from the late 1700s through the 1860s or so, and there were a number of other styles. See the Spring 1973 and Winter 1991 issues of the Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly.

Rod

[Chuck Burrows]

Yep what Rod said re: tobacco boxes and IIRc there is an octagon shaped flint striker box pictured in one of the MOFT Mtn Man Sketchbooks.

One last thing to remember when reseraching the period is that there are thousands of pages of both AFCo and Choteau papers still unpublished and only available on microfiche - most of the Choteau papers are also written in the period French and have not be translated.

NOW back to work........buenas noches all y vaya con Dios....

[jbtusa]

Chuck: You will probably throw me off of the forum for saying this. But, the core issue is documentation. Other than the Ruxton quote, which idicates that punk wood was used by the mountain men, not charcloth, there is little documentation as to what the mountain men used on a day to day basis to catch the spark from flint & steel to make fire.

You are basing you statements on speculation too. Cloth was available to the mountain men, but there is no documentation that it was used on a daily basis as charcloth, nor is there docomentation that the mountain men routinely kept fires going all day long which is unlikely because of danger and the necessity of having to move camp frequently. This is speculation on my part but at least I admit it.

Again, the core issue is documentation. I am repeatedly attacked and criticized for my statements which I admit are speculation. But other than the Ruxton quote, no one can come up with documentation! And, in fact, the Ruxton quote supports my theory!

I am not trying to stir up trouble, but it is always others who attack me, and attack me with no hard documetation to support their attacks. It is like I commit blasphemy against their Holy Grail; i.e, charcloth.

[Rod]

I don't think that charcloth's any Holy Grail, there were certainly alternatives, but I also think that some one living out where fire means the difference between life and death would use every means in his/her disposal to insure that they could make that fire when it's most needed. If this means carrying bits of charred cloth, charred wood, charred mushrooms, uncharred birch fungus, etc., then that would be the smart thing to do. You are right, there's precious little in the way of documentation for any of it, the best thing we can do interpret what we know of the era/area---I think that's the experimental part of what some folks call experimental archeaology/anthropology?

Rod

[jbtusa]

That is exactly my point! Thanks for chiming in!

[Rod]

I'm resurrecting this old thread---with the new highspeed internet, I can finally watch videos---and was directed to this:



I've never tried using the inner part of the milkweed pod to catch sparks, but this guy makes it look easy. Plenty of milkweed around here, I'm going to have to try it. Be nice to add another uncharred natural tinder to the list, especially as tinder fungus doesn't grow on the few birch trees we have around here.

Rod

[skab]

I find that Milkweed ovum, as well as the pith from dry stalks of mullien when sliced very thinly work very well with out charring.

Here is video I made a while back on milkweed ovum



added some pictures


Here's some up close photos of the milkweed ovum, as I know it was hard to see it in the video.