Making Charcloth
Charcloth is a superb tinder for catching a spark

- What is Charcloth?
- Equipment
- The Process
- Using Charcloth

What is Charcloth?
Charcloth is linen or cotton that has been burnt without oxygen. Char cloth can then be stored and later used as a great tinder for catching the weakest of sparks, it easily catches a spark and will glow steadily allowing you to catch more tinder materials and get your fire going. This makes char cloth a perfect companion to go with a flint and steel or firesteel set.

Equipment

• Linen/Cotton, Denim works great.
• Metal Container
• High Heat, camp-fire embers work great, you could even use your cooker hob, however I wouldnt recommend it with the smell & smoke!

The Process

So far I have only needed to make small amounts of charcloth, so I have used a small tin. As you can see to the left I use a .22 air-pellet tin. Note the small hole in the lid of the tin, this is required to allow gases and smoke to be released when burning the cloth inside. But don't make your hole too large, we don't want lots of oxygen getting in there. If you wanted to char a larger batch of cloth in one go you can use a larger tin like a coffee tin etc.

As for the choice of cloth you can experiment with different materials and see what results you get. I have used old t-shirts, dusters, socks and jeans. I have had the best results with denim/jeans, It catches the spark very well.

Cut your material into manageable pieces to suit the size of your tin, I usually fit two or three squares in this small tin. Pack your material quite tightly, you want to minimise the pockets of air-space between the material to prevent the material catching light (flaming). If you are using a larger tin and more material in one go you will have to burn for longer in order to char all the material.

Screw on the lid tightly and get ready to do a controlled burn!

For the heat you can use the hot embers of your camp fire, or a BBQ after you've eaten. You can have small flames licking the tin but you don't really want flames encasing the thing. With my small tin I typically burn for just a few minutes the trick is to watch the small hole in your lid, you should see smoke pluming out, but you don't want flame as this means to much air is getting inside and the material will be consumed to much. Watch the hole and smoke and wait for a reduction in smoke, when this happens take the tin off the heat and close the hole with a stick or coin.

Let the container cool and then open to see your charcloth.

Your Charcloth can now be stored in a tinderbox in your sack, keeping it dry and ready for later use. You might want to try out your Charcloth to check its Char'd enough, ideally it should be entirely black as shown on the right.

<< Back to Menu or carry on reading below!

Using Char cloth

Someone has already made a very good video on how to use char-cloth, so I need not do it again, here's the video:

Thanks to YouTube user snocamo154.

<< Back to Menu

Article Created : 03/02/2008
Last Updated : 10/04/2008

Back to Homepage