How to Make Charcloth

hey folks this is Joshua Enyart the Gray Bearded Green Beret just want to do a quick video on how to make char cloth and I want to start by saying you know I normally don't make char cloth unless I'm back here before I actually go out char cloth is not something that I make in the field I don't carry an empty tin with nothing in it as well as some cotton material just so I can char it when I get my first fire if I'm going to carry a tin that I can use to make char cloth or make charred material in the field that I'm going to carry it full before I pack it to take out with me so normally when I'm making char cloth I'm making it back here in my garage or just outside of my garage when I get into the field I'm going to replenish that supply with natural materials that I can char that work just as well the char pretty much the same in its replenishable material that I can use out of the field so now what is char cloth char cloth is is a highly combustible material that accepts a spark even a cool spark you know what I'm talking about hot spark vs. cool spark a ferrocerium rod for example would be a hot spark that's around 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit 3,000 degrees Celsius and when I'm talking about a cool spark I'm talking about something from like a traditional flint and steel which is around an 800 degree fahrenheit spark now charred cloth and charged material charge natural material are sort of those a couple of those specialty tenders that you use with traditional flint and steel to accept that cool spark so what do you need you need a lighter a heat source some sort of tin to char in and then some sort of cotton material to actually turn into char cloth some great things that you can use to char are cotton balls cotton squares linen cotton denim that works especially well any type of cotton in any type of natural fiber material you can use to make char cloth okay so how do you make it well we make it by taking cotton material or other natural material and we superheat the impurities out of it in an anaerobic environment if you remember back to the fire triangle you have heat fuel and air what we do is we take away the air so that we don't have that complete triangle without the complete triangle we won't have combustion but what we're doing is we're super heating it removing all the impurities and turning it into a sheet of carbon that's ready to accept the spark so how do we do that well it's pretty simple if you're using char cloth this time I think I'll use denim since I have a pair old jeans that got tore up we're going to take ten pieces of denim I'm going to loosely put them inside this container so this is the fuel I don't want to pack these too tight because it'll kind of compress it it won't chars nicely and for the tin I'm using a large can of tuna and I've done I've used this probably I don't know a hundred times now and it's still going I don't carry this with me in the field I transfer that char cloth into smaller more manageable size tin that I put into my belt kit but anyway when I open this for the first time I use one of those round edge kind of can openers so that it's not so sharp and that makes for a tighter seal when we're charring material we're going to be pushing off impurities and those are going to come out in the form of a gas we're going to be pushing off nitrogen hydrogen oxygen etc and all of those are flammable gases so that needs a way to escape and this tuna can doesn't fit together as well as it once did and some of the other tins that you might find really it comes down to can the gas escape and if it can't you need to poke a hole into the top and you'll read it everywhere that it needs to be the smallest little pinhole it's not been my experience this is a rather large hole that I made with a nail and I've actually had containers that I've charred in and had several holes in it so to me it's just a matter of gay the gas pushed out the place to escape and that's what I look for that's what I go with I put those in there and seal it up tight turn on my pocket rocket get that going so now I'm super heating this in an anaerobic environment so I've got my heat and I've got my fuel inside there but there's no air so what I'm looking for is I'm going to start seeing smoke whipping up and those are all moisture and impurities that are coming off of that still a little wet its moisture and impurities that are coming off of that truck that cotton material that I'm trying to char and you can see that outside of that hole I've got a lot coming around the rim as well so that just goes to show you that it still works I want to do now is lighting my indicator light what I call an indicator light I'm turning it down to conserve fuel I just want that smoke to roll out of there and if possible I want to burn it off as it's coming off sometimes it won't light until you get the moisture pushed out of it and sometimes if your heat is too high the gas is forcing out or coming out to forcibly to actually light but lighting it does a couple of things one it lets me know when them impurities are beautiful it lets me know when the impurities are burned off and it keeps kind of reduces the amount of smoke that's coming off of it so that indicator light is telling me that there's oxygen there's nitrogen there's hydrogen gas all still escaping from that so this is kind of my canary my canary flame when that flame goes down I know that I'm pretty close to being fully charred and as you can see that really reduces the amount of smoke that's coming out of my tin here which my garage is open and ventilated which you should definitely do this in a well-ventilated area for sure because these are pretty noxious gases but my garage doors open there's a breeze blowing through it's all going out so anyway I still want to reduce that with the flame and that flame tells me when we're getting close to being done all right so why charred material why use charred material well for a number of reasons if I have charred material I don't have to use the flame from my lighter because this is a miniature Ferro rod and that flick and those sparks will be accepted by chard material and I can put that glowing ember that I created with that char cloth or that charred natural tinder I can place that into a tinder bundle and blow it to flame and I conserved all of the fuel in here because I think we can all agree that you can find empty lighters on the trail in the woods on the side of the road anywhere you look you can find an empty lighter and we'll be out of fuel and people throw it away well that the little tiny ferrocerium rod in here still has a lot of strikes on it so all I did with this one was take a sip tied and tighten it and put it up here to keep this from getting pressed in my pocket or in my kit so that I don't lift you so that I don't lose fuel but it also allows me to use just the ferrocerium rod on charred material so conserving fuel for a lighter or using a broken lighter you can use char cloth or charred natural tinder for that works really well you can see I'm starting to really reduce the amount of flame on my little canary light here so a lot of times what happens is this starts compacting inside there and you have some chard and some uncharred material in there so what I like to do is once that light goes out is I'll kind of pick it up and shake it a little bit without allowing it to open because if you open this that while it's superheated you reintroduced air into that fire triangle and it'll combust and you'll ruin your char cloth but if I keep that lid closed and I kind of agitate it a little bit I can separate that cloth and make sure that anywhere that it was touching itself tightly has kind of opened up and it'll char more evenly another thing that I want to bring up is that you know how long do you cook this for well you cook it until the canary lights done then I'll shake it again reheat it and I'll check to see so but you cook it until all the gases have escaped can you burn charged material not in my experience you can't I've taken a tin and thrown it directly on a fire and forgot about it and once it pushes off those impurities you're left with nothing to carbon as long as air doesn't get introduced into that as long as air doesn't get introduced back into that you're gonna have good charred material you can't you can't push out other impurities once they're gone it's just carbon at that point so I'm just gonna agitate a little bit making sure that the lid stays on and make sure that I'm fully cooked here so I'm watching up here to see if any white smoke starts coming out got a little bit of the canary light going so I've still got some impurities that I opened up you're going to cook those off real quick pretty close to being done here a little more all right you can see I got just a little width of smoke coming off here so I know that it's mostly done not enough to actually light so that's a good indicator that this is complete I'll push a little more heat and make sure you know just a little bit okay a little bit more I'll let that go out the second time and then I'll call it good I'll set it off to cool but okay so conserving fuel under your lighter or using a broken lighter using a smaller ferrocerium rod like this bushcraft necklace from wazoo doesn't take much for that char cloth to get going versus natural tinder that hasn't been charred so makes using something like this a small Ferro rod you know fine motor skills makes that a lot easier more forgiving as far as solar using a fernell lens or a larger magnifier like this works really well you can even with chart material use the lens on your sento your mc2 compasses you can use that to light char material if you're down to just this and you don't have another solar ignition source so you can do that traditionally you know it's used with flint and steel you know which is a cool spark like I was telling you so traditionally it's used with that and you could use it really well with that but another thing I like about charred material in one of the reasons that I carry a carbon steel knife one of my favorites being the more carbon guard Berg is that I can actually throw sparks off the spine of this with flint so if I'm down to nothing and all I have is my belt knife and what's in my pockets I can find natural stone that'll drive a spark off on the spine of this and if I have a way to charge natural to char natural material then I can keep my fires going now how would I get charred material if I have a knife and I don't have anything else well why'd you ask that what I would do is I would use a bow drill I would do a bow drill fire I would use that fire to char materials so that my next fire I don't have to do a bow drill I could take a piece of stone let's find my knife and that char material and I can get my fires going that's much easier than doing a bow drill every single time so that's the value of a carbon steel knife with natural stone when you have charred material so I think this is done I'm gonna let it cool and once it's cool to the touch then I'll open it up and I always like to before I transfer that into my 10 and put it into my kit I always like to do a few test pieces to make sure it was a good batch stick around this is now cool to the touch so I can go ahead and open it up and take a look at what we've got in here yeah that looks good so what used to be you know 10 pieces of this blue denim with all these impurities is now this perfect black char cloth that's ready to accept a spark so let's test one I've got a tinder bundle right here we'll head outside and we'll take a shot at one of these okay so let's test out a piece of this char cloth and I'm gonna use traditional quick steel what I like to do with traditional Flint steel is rather than have a flat piece of char cloth that's gonna catch a spark I like to fold mine once and then fold it again and that kind of creates several edges that can catch a spark rather than just the very edge or the actual char cloth itself I like to have those kind of out kind of like fingers ready to catch that spark it just seems like I have more success that way so that's the way I like to do it I'll put that right on the edge of my stone and then if everything goes right and my edge geometry and the the way that I'm holding this works it shouldn't take more than a couple of strikes to get that char cloth going there we go once that's going because it's an ember I need to place that inside of a tinder bundle and blow it the plane start off with Long Slava soft blows that just warms up the tender once it starts rolling out the back I can blow a little harder turn it over missile etiquette feed I'm done so that is a great batch of char cloth I'll transfer that over and put in my belt kit all right guys that is it for char cloth now remember char cloth is something that you make back in the rear put it in your kit carry that out with you there's no reason to take a good piece of cotton out in the field and use that for char cloth when you're surrounded by Charbonneau material so the next video I'll talk to you about making charred natural material in the field so make sure you like subscribe make sure you click that notification Belva stay tuned and as always thanks for everything you do for the great verdigris brain channel make sure you check out my new website at flint and steel net where you can get a schedule of all of my courses as well as all the other instructors within the flint and steel critical skills group network until next time stay safe and hopefully I'll see you out in the woods

Channel: The Gray Bearded Green Beret

Views: 50,741

Rating: 4.982379 out of 5

Keywords: Ranger, Green Beret, Pathfinder, Survival, Bushcraft, Preparedness, Fire, Shelter, Camping, DIY, Char Cloth, Char

Id: IGg_abFB8Zs

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 06 2018