Do cattails make good tinder?

Poppy

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My grandkids might partake in a competition outing with the scouts sometime in January. One of the tasks may be to light a fire, using natural ingredients, vaseline is not allowed. I'm not sure of the rules, but I think char-cloth may be permitted, maybe cotton balls, but nothing commercial.

So at any rate, there is a pond nearby that has some cattails, and I thought I might scoop a few up.
 

FRITZHID

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The fluffy bloomed ones burn quite nicely, the stiff, dense, brown ones however do not burn very well without some kinda fuel, be it alcohol, gas or lighter fluid. The green ones can be dried and will smolder but require good lungs to keep them burning well.
 

TEEJ

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Look for old pine tree stumps, dig down where the base/roots are...and it's stored sap. (IE: Its dead, and dried up, not the bottom of a live tree, just the stump, etc.)

Whittle off tinder from the sappy part of the stump, and it burns like crazy.

:D
 

Woods Walker

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My grandkids might partake in a competition outing with the scouts sometime in January. One of the tasks may be to light a fire, using natural ingredients, vaseline is not allowed. I'm not sure of the rules, but I think char-cloth may be permitted, maybe cotton balls, but nothing commercial.

So at any rate, there is a pond nearby that has some cattails, and I thought I might scoop a few up.

Yes and no. Cattail fluff is a flashover tinder much like milkweed or cottonwood fluff. It can easily catch a spark then it will flashover but unless there is something to catch those flames it's over. Here is my suggestion. Get some Birch bark and mix it with the cattail fluff. It's often a one strike, one flick or one match fire. Here are some videos I did on mixing natural flashover tinder (milkweed and cattail fluff) with natural aromatic hydrocarbon tinder (yellow and white birch bark). They're an amazing combination.



 

Poppy

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Thanks for the replies! And woodswalker, the video showed what you meant by "flashover" tinder.

Teej,
Thanks for the pine root tip.

Do pine cones work well?
I guess if so, then using some modern "crush them between two rocks" techniques might make them work better?
 

nbp

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Absolutely. When it comes to tinder, lots of surface area is the key. Especially if you want it to take a spark from a ferro rod or the like. Lighters are a lot more forgiving.
 

Str8stroke

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I love watching Woods Walker videos. The man knows his back woods adventuring stuff! That one video he did with one of the Headlamp reviews in the snow was so cool. No pun intended.

Poppy, I have used pinecones & pine straw many times. As long as it is dry and the cones are open. If they have the helicopter seeds, those work too. I use a Swiss Army knife with the magnifying glass and it will light up dry straw super quickly. It burns up fast, so have some other tinder ready. I would build a pad of straw with the cones on top with a little straw on top of the cones. Basically making a pine cone straw sandwich. As a bonus, it smells good too. Just remember, sappy wood will pop and throw sparks. So careful not to burn your pack or tent!
 

Poppy

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My grandson and I did some experimenting with starting a fire with flint and steel. I found that if I taped two hacksaw blades together with a couple of layers of tape between them so that they were a little separated, (and cut down to a 3 inch length) he got a lot more sparks with each strike.

We got some very ripe cattails, (where they had already burst open and were white and fluffy), some common reed (Pragmites australis) and some dry pine needles.

It seemed that the cattails would ignite, almost as easily as a cotton ball, but they/it would not burn all the way through, once ignited. Often there would be a quarter sized flame that might move a bit but not really spread out. It was OK, but not the best on the planet.

Depending upon, I guess, how dry the common reed was: sometimes one strike was all it needed, and it went up in a ball of fire, other times it might have taken 50 strikes, and there would be some smoldering.

I did find some milkweed. That stuff is like flash paper!

My son and I took a stroll into the woods and found a damaged pine tree, with a golf ball sized hunk of sap that oozed out. Later that week, my grandson and I pulled some bark off of a white birch tree.

We mixed together some milkweed fluff, birch bark, common reed, and pine sap, and put it in a baggie. I showed the kids to use that as tinder, and to build the fire with kindling around and above that. Yeah... well they didn't.

Fortunately, we had to do some blowing to get the fires to catch on some of our practice fires, so my grandson knew when he had to blow on it. His second strike caught the common reeds on fire, and with some blowing, the kindling caught! As a team, they got all ten points for firebuilding.

Overall, they came in third place, out of a group of about 12.

Thanks to all for helping me with this learning experience.

When I start a fire at home, I usually use some citronella oil, and a lighter :rolleyes: but going forward, it might be my grandson, who is starting it with flint and steel. :thumbsup:
 
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127.0.0.1

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you want tinder ? scrape some fur off your socks with a knife/shaving motion
like a little lint ball
BLAMMO this stuff lights faster than anything

this is why I save bags of dryer lint and keep it in my bugout bag


otherwise tinder fungus works well, especially in fire pistons
 

Poppy

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What's funny is that the scouts were taught to put dryer lint in a toilet paper tube to use it to start a fire. Yet, it was a prohibited item, along with commercial fire starters, vaseline, or any accelerants.

They would lose a point for each of up to three matches used, or lose three points if they use a lighter, (but a lighter was on the list of prohibited items :crazy: )
 

Subterrestrial

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I love searching the campground for dry browse for firestarting. Lichens and pine needles are my favorite. If you find a pine branch with clusters of needles still attached, it's pure gold.

Doesn't count as "non-commercial", but if you're car camping and it's been raining there are a lot of unexpected options at your disposal. Potato chips actually make decent kindling. Cardboard makes surprisingly good kindling as well. You wouldn't think so, being paper and all but because it's more dense than newspaper it burns slower.

Also, I always remember to fill up my tin with sticks from my 10lb box of fatwood. :whistle:
 
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