Charred sawdust as tinder. A home practice run.

[Chigger]

A while back did some sanding on a small piece of furniture and ended up with quite a bit of sawdust. This was put into an old tobacco tin and baked on one of the burners on my gas stove.

Baked the sawdust until it was a dark black/brown.



Next sprinkled the sawdust onto a piece of red stringybark along with some crumbled white bracket fungus. This readily took the spark from flint and steel, soon was smouldering freely.



A bit of huffing and puffing soon burst into flame.



Was quite pleased with the exercise as charred sawdust is very light and easy to transport on a outdoors trip in a rucksack. The only downside is sawdust is a bit fiddly to use, care has to be taken and at a windy place the firelighting would have to be done in a sheltered spot.

 

[Wave Man]

nice mate, will have to try this

 

[Thrud]

Could you add a small amount of vaseline to get to a slightly clumped consistency that would not blow away and might improve the time of burning?

 

[Chigger]

Think adding vaseline would inhibit the sawdust taking a spark. Vaseline as a substance is not particulry inflamable. The spark from flint and steel is not as hot as a spark as from a ferro rod.

 

[Thrud]

Try Vaseline cotton wool balls! Extremely flammable; petroleum jelly. I think it'll work....if it doesn't I owe you a beer!

 

[Wentworth]

Good discovery Chigger, I'll have to try this out.

It reminds me of a post Le loup did a few years ago using punkwood to catch a spark too.

 

[Chigger]

Yes charred punkwood is a good tinder and is what I normally use with a tinderbox. Some years ago was lucky to find a large rotted she oak log which I gleefully cut up and brought home.

My firelighting revolves around natural materials gathered from the bush. Along with flint and steel.