Sunday, September 26, 2010

Bushcraft - Central Texas Style - The Tinder Maker

Making Tinder


One of the most important parts of bushcraft is being able to make a fire. Making a fire requires several different elements for it to be a successful operation. Lacking a source of good tinder can be a problem but is easily solved with a simple piece of kit that is compact, lightweight, low cost and readily available anywhere. Using this simple piece of kit is an easy way to create an adequate source of tinder to help get your kindling started when building a fire.

The above picture shows some tinder that was made using a simple pencil sharpener.

Adequate or suitable tinder may not always be readily available, especially in wet or damp conditions, but by using a simple hand pencil sharpener you can make sufficient quantities of tinder to help get that fire started. By collecting small twigs and then using a hand pencil sharpener you can create lots of tinder to help get your fire started. Outer layers are sometimes damp or wet but the inner layers of small twigs will usually be dry enough to work as suitable tinder. It’s also a very safe means of creating tinder that will help to reduce a possible injury from the use of a knife to make shavings for tinder.

Lil' RW and myself are now off on another bear hunt!

Got tinder maker?

Staying above the water line!

Riverwalker

4 comments:

HermitJim said...

What an excellent idea! I would have never thought of it!

Learn something new every day! Thanks, RW...

riverwalker said...

To: HermitJim

Thanks.

RW

Anonymous said...

The dollar stores have these very inespensive units that come with two sizes of sharpeners, or have a container for the scrappings for later use.

riverwalker said...

To: anonymous 7:50

I got the idea from the wall mounted unit in my utility room that I use to sharpen my pencils for some of my carpentry work. Dumped the shavings on the pit when doing some grilling and "poof" they went up in smoke!

Carry a pocket size version in the truck...used to sharpen pencils if I need to leave a note about where I'm going or when I'll be back.

Thanks anon.

RW

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