Making Better Char Cloth

When starting a flint and steel or striker type of fire, char cloth makes all the difference in being able to actually get the fire started or just making a bunch of sparks that never catch anything on fire.  Char cloth (sometimes also called charred cloth) is one of those amazing mountain man items that is still very useful today.  Char cloth is pieces of blackened fabric that easily catch a spark and burn similarly to the way steel wool burns–no big flame, but a nice ember burn that doesn’t blow out once it’s lit.  The spark lights the char cloth and the char cloth is used to light the other tinder.  I’ve been wanting to add char cloth to my fire kits and having used all my char cloth made by others, I decided to make a batch of my own.

100% cotton jersey fabric
100% cotton jersey fabric

I had some basic directions to go off of, but had never made it myself, so here’s how the first round went.  I got some 100% cotton fabric–I used jersey fabric (an old T shirt) and cut it into approximately 2″ squares.  Mine was kind of a natural color, but you could probably use any color you have, just avoid screen-printed designs, etc.  I cut the ribbing off from the neck and sleeve ends as well as the seams.  You just want the fabric.

Next, I got a metal can–I used an old cookie tin.  I punched a vent hole in the can lid with a hammer and nail.  You can use whatever metal can you have–I’ve seen it done with smaller tins as well as cleaned out food cans with foil for a lid.

Char cloth cooking tin
Char cloth cooking tin
Cut cloth in the tin
Cut cloth in the tin

I put the cut up fabric squares in the tin, put the lid on, and put the can on my grill on low and let it cook.  You definitely want to do this outside–burning fabric doesn’t smell all that good.  My instructions said to cook it until it stopped smoking.  I had the tin fairly full, and cooked it close to 3 hours before I decided to turn it off.  It never smoked a lot.  When it cooled, I opened the can and only the bottom 3-4 layers were black, the rest of the fabric was brown.

I turned the pile over and put it back on the grill on Medium this time and cooked it another close to 3 hours.  This time it was all black when it was finished.  However, it didn’t catch a spark very well.  I could light it with a flame, or an occasional large spark, but it was very frustrating to work with.  Nothing like the char cloth I’d had before that a friend of ours made from terry cloth (old towel).

Cooked jersey char cloth
Cooked jersey char cloth

So I put it back on the grill again, this time I only filled the can about 1/3 full and cooked it on high another 3 hours or so.  Now it was a little more fragile and easy to tear (as char cloth generally is), but it still didn’t catch spark well.  I had no more ideas to make it better, so I decided to start over.

Cotton monks' cloth (quarter for scale) and smaller cooking tin
Cotton monks' cloth (quarter for scale) and smaller cooking tin

The second and far better batch of char cloth I made started with 100% cotton monk’s cloth I got at Walmart.  Notice the loose weave and air holes.  Those made a huge difference.  I cut it a little smaller this time–about 1 1/2 inch square as 2″ was a little larger than necessary.  There is some shrinkage as it cooks, but not that much.  I wanted to see if it would work straight from the store without washing the fabric first, so I only cut 5 squares of it.

I put it in a smaller tin which also got the hammer/nail air vent in the lid.

Feeling like I’d spent enough of my grill gas on this project, I opted to do this round real mountain man style and build a fire and toss the tin in the fire.  I pretty well buried it–it’s in there somewhere.

Real mountain man char cloth cooking method
Real mountain man char cloth cooking method

It did not cook long in the fire–maybe 15 minutes (of course it was in a smaller tin than the first round, but I’m guessing even a large tin wouldn’t take 9 hours in the fire).  I couldn’t tell when it stopped smoking since it was in a fire with all the rest of the smoke, so I just guessed at when to pull it out.  It wouldn’t matter if it stayed in there until the fire burned out as long as no sparks got in the airhole and caught all the fabric on fire in the meantime.

Cooked monk's cloth char cloth
Cooked monk's cloth char cloth

I fished it out, let it cool, and opened it to nicely blackened monk’s cloth.

This second round of char cloth lights up with minimal spark from a firestarter or flint/steel.  It is more fragile than the jersey char cloth, but works much better.  I’ll have to post on flint/steel firestarting another time :)

Char cloth burning
Char cloth burning

So, to recap, to make better char cloth, start with a 100% cotton fabric with texture and a fairly loose weave.  Use a fire pit if you can to save on gas.  Cooking on higher heat and cooking a smaller batch help speed up cooking time.  Happy firestarting!

Awesome Firestarter – cotton balls and vaseline

All Preppers know that in a TEOTWAWKI or WTSHTF situation or any other crisis event you’ve got to be able to start fires, especially in a Bug Out situation. We’re not talking about being able to get a spark here, we’re talking about strong tinder lighting capability. If you add moisture to the mix you’ve got an even more complicated and risky situation.

Lets say you’ve bugged out, you’ve got all your Bug Out Gear with you, and it’s been drizzling a bit. The ground is wet, found tinder is going to be wet, the only thing that might be dry is your last couple squares of toilet paper – and you’ve got to have a fire. So what do you do? You put your last precious squares of TP wadded up on the damp ground and then set your damp twigs on top of it and use one of your 27 lighters or 6 other fire starters you have in your BOB to get it going. In less than a minute your TP has burned out and the ground and twigs are still damp – and your SOL.

Enter a very simple prep – taking regular old cotton balls (100% cotton, none of that fake junk) that cost about $1.25 for a bag of 120 (that’d be the LARGE size cotton ball) and cover them with Vaseline which costs about $3.00 for a good size jar. Now you’ve got a very compact and light-weight water resistant starter that will burn strong for several minutes.

Here’s the step-by-step and a demo:

Transfer the cotton balls into a decent container – we used ziploc sandwich bags.

cottonprep1

Put a handful of Vaseline into each bag and seal with a bit of air in them.

cottonprep3

Knead the cotton into the Vaseline until each ball in the bag is covered nicely (this takes a little bit of time)

cottonprep4

Voila! You just made a baggie full of really killer fire starter. We made up a few.

cottonprep2

There are dozens of ways to make these, this just illustrates what I’ve found useful and easy. One of these baggies will go into mine and each kids Bug Out Bag (BOB) with several baggies going into my regular long-term storage. There are lots of ways to store them too, right now I’m just storing them in their baggie.

To light the ball, you rip it part way open to expose the inner threads of cotton and spark against them. They ignite very quickly and the rest of the ball acts like a candle due to the vaseline covering. Once the ball has sat in jelly for a few days it will be water resistant.

For about $14.00 we just put 600 reliable fire starters into our storage – not bad at all!

This video demonstrates how long and how well the cotton ball burns once it’s covered in jelly, the other balls in this video are plain ole regular cotton balls.

In the video I’m lighting the cotton ball with a
BlastMatch which is by far my favorite sparker of all time – grab one here if you don’t have one!

Don’t be caught without the ability to easily and reliably make fire! Take the little amount of time and money these puppies require and you’ll always have the security of reliably starting many fires.

– Phil801