After a few days at the bush farm meet with a great bunch of people I took along some fungus as a few of the people who attended last month said they wold like to have a go at making amadou so I took along a couple of fungus's for those who wanted them and said I would post a thread on my knowledge of it
Horse shoe fungus is a member of the Polyporus family, more commonly known as false tinder fungus or conk ( not true tinder fungus as this is chaga ) generally found on dead silver birch trees , at this point I want to add that I have made amadou from two types of conk and have seen trama in at least two more type which I believe could be made into amadou although the last stage of the prep varied slightly the overall method was the same
The fungus is made up of three layers
The cuticle
The trama
The pores
The wanted layer is the trama this is the central layer of material so it's the cork like material under the hard crusty layer and above the layer of tube like layer
Step one is to remove the hard shell this is not easy and is undoubtedly the most unpleasant part of the process . In the past I have had ha people say to soak the fungus for a couple of days to soften it up but in reality you need to allow at least four days for it to make ant difference
Once this is removed you can remove the pore like part this is much easier and is somewhat like taking the inner from a coconut I use to discard this on the fire until recently I watched a good friend of mine use this in the same as char cloth and it works a treat so a bonus in the tinder box
The next part can vary and is down to choice you can either soak for another week or boil for at least 12 hours this can be done by adding salt pettre which was traditionally done by adding the rotting straw from a animal pen which was saturated by excrement ,or a lye solution or the traditional way is to use urine yep urine this is only appropriate if you use the boiling method .
I'm happy to say I use a lye solution which I make by boiling ash from a fire and it works best from a softwood fire which I then repeatedly boil until I'm left with a thick sludge after removing any large particles which float when boiling I make a good jam jar full as this will do two or three lots of amadou ( it's important to boil the ash first as if you add to much or a to course ash mix to the amadou it will clog the pores and it will not take a spark well at all
The next step is to slice the amadou into strips of your required thickness i try for 5-6mm then either allow to soak in your lye solution or boil in your chosen mix boiling needs to be for at least 12 hours where as soaking needs to be for between 3-5 days checking regularly for a consistency of being able to squeeze it between your fingers to half of the original size
There are several ways to achieve the swede like leather you will recognise as amadou some people say to beat the material to soften this needs to be some with something with no sharp edges such as a pebble I personally don't like this way as it is quite difficult as if you go to far it falls to bits .
My preferred method is to simply knead it between your fingers with damp hands until its soft it also tends to get larger in size by about 30%this is laterally not in thickness ,
Then you need to dry it under no circumstances force dry jit , you can dry it by leaving it to dry in a warm place but it will go hard again and will need to be manipulated again ,I like to continue to manipulate it with dry hands I find it works best then it's good to go
Hope this is ok and have fun would love to see the results from others
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Originally Posted by luresalive
