Re: Flint and Steel
Hallo!
"What will keep your tinder, slow match, or char cloth dry while your matches get soaked?"
It is not so muc ha matter of having dry char to dry tinder, as it is a matter of having the knowledge and skill to find natural materials suitable to catch and hold a spark long enough to coax it into a flame.
Even after downpours, there are dry areas to be searched under rock overhangs, the leeward side of rocks and trees (dead leaves as well as inner barks), the undersides of fallen trees.
Once Upon a Time, on the secoan highest mountain in Pennsylvania, we had a frog-strangler after a vertical wall of water that put four inches or rain water in my cup and totally soaked the forest so that even the above techniques failed.
I had my lads search for and process tinder in a three hour process of creating and sorting out piles of progressively larger tinder materials from micro shavings on up.
It took three hours or prep work, but a flint and steel fire was made from a wet woodland.
(The "cheat" if necessary would have been black powder.)
The account of the Irish Brigade (116th PA, IIRC) complaining about being soaked in a soaked woods and only getting fires going with flint and steel, would seem to support the knowledge and skill of the fire-makers.
Curt
Hallo!
"What will keep your tinder, slow match, or char cloth dry while your matches get soaked?"
It is not so muc ha matter of having dry char to dry tinder, as it is a matter of having the knowledge and skill to find natural materials suitable to catch and hold a spark long enough to coax it into a flame.
Even after downpours, there are dry areas to be searched under rock overhangs, the leeward side of rocks and trees (dead leaves as well as inner barks), the undersides of fallen trees.
Once Upon a Time, on the secoan highest mountain in Pennsylvania, we had a frog-strangler after a vertical wall of water that put four inches or rain water in my cup and totally soaked the forest so that even the above techniques failed.
I had my lads search for and process tinder in a three hour process of creating and sorting out piles of progressively larger tinder materials from micro shavings on up.
It took three hours or prep work, but a flint and steel fire was made from a wet woodland.
(The "cheat" if necessary would have been black powder.)
The account of the Irish Brigade (116th PA, IIRC) complaining about being soaked in a soaked woods and only getting fires going with flint and steel, would seem to support the knowledge and skill of the fire-makers.
Curt
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