playing with fire

[your_comforting_company]

well... I had a little time to goof around and it was cold out so I went out to the 'chop shop' to make fire. I made a really poor excuse for an oil lamp, but I wanted to test wick materials so it didn't have to be fancy. I found an old can in the trash, cut it in half, filled it with melted tallow, added my wicks and set it on fire. I guess now's a good time to start at the beginning.

How to render tallow:
Take the raw fat from any animal, dice it into small pieces, and heat it in a pan with enough water to cover. put it on medium heat to melt the oil from the fleshy tissues of the fat. pour the contents through a colander and seive to get the bits of meat out, store the liquid somewhere cool till it hardens. poke a hole in the tallow and drain out the fluid underneath. Whats left is called tallow. hard white waxy stuff.



I selected some stuff I thought would hold a flame or hot coal, poured the melted tallow over it and let it cool.

top left to bottom right: yucca twig, shelf fungus, yucca cordage, cedar punk.

I lit it up to see what works and what doesn't. The yucca didn't, the other 3 burned very well.

The yucca stick failed to remain lit, the shelf fungus burned best, the yucca worked very well until it fell over into the grease, and the punk worked well also.

I also tried some dry grass out of the yard, just for the heck of it. It also worked, though maybe not as well as the yucca fibers. Here's a pic with the grass wick in the middle, fungus on left, and punk on right. Fungus and punk worked best of the few things I tried and burned until all the oil was gone from the can. the lamp burned for about 4 hours with several wicks in it the whole time.


This is the shelf fungus I'm talking about. I found it on a tree somewhere and I always thought it was called "tinder polypore". I have no idea what it's called but if anyone else does, I'd like to know.


and here's a pic of using it as a coal extender. A coal extender is something you use in portable fire so that it keeps a coal burning, but does not make smoke or flames. It burns more like incense so here's a picture of a small pinch that burned for almost an hour. same fungus. It started as a very tiny coal at the end, and propagated into a large coal. This is very useful when making friction fire tindles, as if you include it in your grass, it makes hot coals readily.


So.. I got bored and played with fire. thought I'd share my discoveries for anyone looking for wick materials. If I find something else to try, I'll let you know how it goes.

and no I didn't wet the bed like mama said I would...

[crashdive123]

Nice post. Thanks.

[Ken]

Another good post. Thanks, YCC!

[Rick]

That looks like a True Tinder Fungus. If the tree was growing then it's probably a True Tinder Fungus. If the tree was on the ground then it is probably a False Tinder Fungus. TT Fungus generally grows on live Birch trees and looks a lot like a hunk of blackened wood. FT Fungus grows on dead birch trees. And no, I don't know how they know if the tree is living or dead. Perhaps they ask.

On another note. I had to get the tire's on my wife's van rotated today and I was thumbing though the September copy of some hunting magazine. It had an article about some guy that had shot 35,000 grouse in the last 50 years, how to shoot deer from above, how to hunt squirrels and an article on fire tinder (hopefully with all that info someone will know the magazine).

The author tested a number of different fire starters including the old petroleum soaked cotton balls (which he liked) as well as flint and steel (which some chemist told him was impossible....yeah, I laughed, too). Anywhooooo. He said the best fire starter was his underwear. No kidding. He pulled them off and lit the crotch and he said he had a four foot fire going in no time and it burned a long time. These were the jockey kind. He lamented that a lot of folks had succumbed to the elements with matches in the pockets and nether garments still on their body. If only they had known.

Now you do.

[your_comforting_company]

thanks for the info. It is rather woody-like for fungus, and I broke it off an old water oak if i remember. I know it was over a house and I had to wait for it to be cut down so I wouldn't get crushed by limbs if one fell on the roof. The tree was mostly alive when cut.

true tinder fungus.. good name for it, cuz thats what I use it for lol!

[Rick]

You can do a search on it using the Search button. There are quite a few posts on it including one I posted showing how to use it as a wilderness stove. It will actually boil water pretty quickly even in the rain.

[catfish10101]

Good info, thanks

[Old GI]

Ooooooh! Fungus!!!! How can you even touch THAT?????

[your_comforting_company]

got hold of some cotton from the side of the road today. cleaned the seeds out, frayed it, twisted into several strings of different tightness. also stuck some in "some weed" that grows in the back yard. it's hollow inside and tall so it had to have good vascular qualities (I thought). stuffed a tight cotton wick in it and it did alright. the medium twist did pretty good by itself, but the really loose twist did the best. The weed by itself didn't burn well at all.

also, tried some moss that grows on the ground in shady waste places around here. I call it brain moss (I use it to store leftover brains) but others have called it deer moss (no idea why). I had some on hand, dried already, wadded it up and tied a pretty little bow on it with some thread. It burned really good for a long time. I would imagine spanish moss would do well when bundled tightly.
half a cigarette works ok.
a bamboo splinter didn't do squat.

best thing so far though is the tinder fungus. burns slow and holds a large coal on top. it is a bit frustrating moving it around, but it burns until all the oil is gone with only a tiny piece. about 1/4 x 1/4 x 1/2" burned for 4 hours when I quit adding oil.
All you foragers out there. If you find some of this stuff, grab it and keep it in a dry place. It is becoming one of the most prized things in my "catch all" cabinet lol.

The qualities that seem to make a good wick are holding an ember on the end, and the vascular abilities. It must move the oil up to the hot end and that must stay hot enough to burn the oil. simple really, so forget what mom said and play with some fire.

[your_comforting_company]

oh yeah. heres the moss-stuff. I tried referencing it on the net but couldn't find it. anyone know what it's really called?

[crashdive123]

I do believe it is deer moss.

[your_comforting_company]

was messin around last night and made one of Ricks fat lamps from This thread.
had water boiling in less than 5 minutes.
made out of junk layin around and deer fat rendered to tallow.. simple and effective.
Thanks Rick!!

[Rick]

No problem. Here's a candle I made after reading some of Erun's posts. I don't see any reason this couldn't be modified to use as a stove.

http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...t=bacon+candle

[hunter63]

Good thread, y'all are really working at it.

Gonna try this with some deer tallow.

After reading all the bacon candle thread, one word of advice, "Don't fry bacon, naked".

[crashdive123]