UK sources of tinder for Fire Lighting - Bushcraft tests by Pondguru

Hello there. In this video, I'm going to be gathering some natural tinder with the hope of creating fire using one of these fellas, which is a fire steel and striker and only what I find when I'm out for a walk. So if you come with me, you'll find out about UK sources of tinder because I'm going right back to basics. All I'm taking is a knife and a fire steel and striker, a knife to cut things and something to light fires with. But this doesn't light fires by itself, you need tinder and that's where this video comes in because I'm going to show you where you can find natural tinder in the UK. Let's light some fires. Here we've got some clematis, it does grow wild in some places. Now when these have finished flowering they leave this, it's the seed heads like pom-poms. They can be good for fire lighting so I think we'll take some of that. Don't think these ones are quite ready but they might still Still take a spark, we'll soon find out. Here we've got some dried grass heads. This is quite an ornamental grass. These look pretty dry. It's obviously finished flowering a long time ago. We'll take some of that as well. Now here's something that grows in pretty much every forest in the world, ivy. And it puts out these little hairy root type things that grab ahold of the tree and keep the ivy there. These go right around the tree. So even when it's wet, there's always gonna be some of those that are dry. I think we'll take some of them. Now this is the most awesome stuff. This is a fungus called Devil's Toenail Fungus or Devil's Hoof Fungus. It has a few different names. I'll put the Latin name on now. And when it first starts to grow, it grows with this kind of caramelly, milky colour. With a milky underneath. But as it matures, this hardens and it goes a grey colour. And this is a bushcraft fungus. Here we've got a mature one. And just for scale, it's pretty big. Another one growing underneath there. When they mature, they go brown underneath and grey on top. If you harvest it, when it's mature like that, and dry it out, you end up with an exceptionally hard piece of fungus, which is really light. And this does take a spark. It's actually used to carry fire from one place to another. If you poke a little hole in the bottom of here with your knife, drop a spark in there, that will actually smolder for hours and hours, allowing you to take fire from one place to another. These are excellent. Animals can help as well. I've just spotted this little hole in this tree stump and there's loads of dry moss in here. Look at that. That's a nice looking beginnings of a nest. I'm going to leave that though but that just shows you that you can find nice dry stuff in the most unexpected places. This is exactly the sort of hole that a rabbit would dig in the middle of a field to have its young. Obviously this is just in a pot outside my house but there's a full-size How's a rabbit been going in here? Oh, and the hole goes right in there. Further down than I can reach probably comes all the way back around and right under here and in there will be some lovely dry bedding. There's the rabbit just due to come back with a little bit more dry bedding so if you don't want to collect it allow nature to collect it for you. Dry grass. Seems like a pretty obvious one but grass isn't always dry enough. If you take it off the ground it may well still have some of the dew of the night before. I always like to get it If it's off the ground. i.e. held up by other plants. It's normally drier. I'm going to take some of that and we'll give that a go. Now here's one I've never noticed before. Looks like some sort of alpine plant. I don't know what it is. Possibly a sedum maybe? I'm not entirely sure. Seems to have nice dry flower heads so I'm going to take some of that as well. This stuff that's clogging up the floor of the wood is called bracken. There you go. It's a sort of big tough fern but it dies off in the winter. It isn't an evergreen and when it dies its leaves go quite dry. So these can be used to light fires as well. I picked this spot because it's got a lot of sun on it. So hopefully these will be dry enough to take a spark. Brambles. Here we've got a big old hazel tree. Some of the branches that go up the side are dry. They've hardly got any knots in them. So if you've got a sharp enough knife, these can make good fire sticks. That one isn't quite dry enough. It shouldn't bend like that. This one's almost to the point of being rotten. But that's how they should snap. They need to be that dry to take a spark. This one might be a little bit too far gone to be able to cut fire sticks, but I'm going to give it a try. So how do you turn these hazel sticks, which are pretty dry, into usable tinder? Well, it's actually pretty hard, impossible if you haven't got a knife. If you've got a sharp knife, like this one, hold that down in the ground, and with a bit of force, you scrape around and round and round and round and round, all the way around, backwards and forwards, working your way up, until all of this flares out, a bit like that, all the way up there. Hopefully, when you drop a spark on that, because it's so thin and dry, it'll catch a light. But it's very difficult. It's more like a secondary source of fuel, this. It's not really a tinder. You can light fires this way, but it is hard. Best to get nice dry tinder. As soon as it fires, put one of these on. The flame will burn from the tips to the core, and within no time you'll end up with a hot, good, long-lasting flame that you can put bigger things onto. Now ideally you don't want to cut in too deep. If you cut in deep it'll make it too thick and then the flame won't be able to get a hold of it. Little ones like that. See they're very curly and these ones have a very good chance of catching a spark. Don't worry about that, that'll do. There you go. Get plenty of these fellas, cram them together, drop a spark in and hopefully you can use them to light a fire. Now here's two great ones very close together. First of all we've got goose grass or sticky jack. It really is awful when you're walking through the woods in the spring and summer. Loads of little balls stick to you. Ah, it's horrible. But it can be good for lighting fires. I don't think it's perfectly dry, this one. But it is mixed in with a load of seed heads from thistles. And that's the thistle right next to it. So I'm going to take some of these seed heads from these very spiky thistles, put those in a bag, and try those as well. That's lovely and dry. Beautiful. And surely that has to take a spark. I would be shocked if I can't light a fire with these. Beautiful. Now here's a plant I'm sure we could use later in the year. This is burdock of dandelion and burdock fame. That's the seed heads and in a couple of months time they'll be brown and exceptionally dry. And because of that I'm sure they would make an excellent tinder, but not at the moment. Here we've got a very useful plant. This is called reed mace. Scientific name Arctium lappa, it's also known as cattail or often referred to as bulrush. It isn't actually true bulrush, bulrush is a totally different thing. Either way, this stuff is great for lighting fires. This one here is very hard, that's this year's flower, no good. These ones are last year's flower and they are ready just to take a spark. So I'll stick those in the bag, we'll experiment with those in a moment. This is a beautiful plant called teasel. This grows all over the northern hemisphere, this is another spiky thing, and this is good for lighting fires as well, but unfortunately this is this year's, it's a little bit too early to be harvesting that, so I'm going to have a look around for an older plant from last year. Here's two new plants, here's an old plant, I'm not sure whether you can see, but there is a colour difference, and the stem on this one is absolutely bone dry, that's the one I'm going to take. The stem could possibly be used to light fires as well. I'm just taking the head. I'm going to get some more heads and you'll be pretty impressed with this one. Now these are gorse bushes. They get very distinctive yellow flowers on. These are the remnants of the flowers. These can be very dry but they're exceptionally prickly. I don't wish to harvest them with bare hands. But they are always another option. This is broom. You tend to find it in the same areas as you do the gorse bushes. Get these pods on which you can hear cracking in the summer, quite often on the ends of these they die off which creates lovely dry tinder. Don't think that's fine enough to take a spark itself but it'll be good as a secondary fuel source. So once you've got the tinder going, drop these fellas on to give a little bit more heat and a little bit longevity to the flame. This is a plant that I've never used for fire lighting before. This is docking, gets those leaves on. It gets to about this sort of height and that's what you use to rub on your nettle stings when you've been stung by a nettle. But the seed heads seem pretty dry and as I say I've never used this before but I am going to harvest this and give it a go. It might not be quite dry enough but it's something to consider. Here's a tree that most people know, silver birch. Its bark is excellent for lighting fires. Peel it off and you've got ready-made paper full of tar and ready to take a spark. There's some good stuff up there. Just like paper, I'm going to gather some of that and let you see what that's like. Well here we go, got all our stuff, I've separated them all into different bags, keep everything nice and separate, just so I can assess the usefulness of them without them getting contaminated with other things. So now I'm going to give it a go, see if I can light fires with this stuff. But first I'll show you that, it's called Maya dust from, whoops, from Light My Fire. I'll show you how easy it is to light a fire with this prepared, ready-bought stuff. Just basically wood shavings that are very high in sap. And it smells fantastic. Absolutely beautiful smell. There we go. Got fire out of that already. One strike and it's a light. Now I've just put it out. So, will it be as easy with the things that we gathered on our trip out? I can't remember which order I gathered these things in, so I'm just going to grab them as they come to us. Starting with that one. That one's the dockin' seed head. Looks like it might be useful, but we'll see. Seems quite dry. Yeah, it's not going very well. It catches the spark, but it doesn't seem to do anything with it. Try adding a little bit more of the twiggy stuff. See if that makes a difference. At a push, it might luckily catch a spark and ignite. It's maybe it's not perfectly dry. I don't know, but it's not a good tinder. Next one, dry grass. This isn't perfectly dry. It's still got a little bit of greenery in it. But it feels reasonably dry, so it may work. Well, as expected, that was no problem at all. Dry grass is good. This next one is the grass seed heads from that ornamental grass. I think this was one of the first things that I collected. This feels lovely and dry. Yep, no problem at all. That one lights very well, and it's got a nice hot flame as well. Ah, now this was that plant that I didn't know the name of. It's a little bit like an alpine plant, but it did have dry seed heads. I really don't know with this one, because I've never lit a fire with anything like this. Not very good. Again, a lucky spark might just catch it alight. Not necessarily good for catching a spark, but as soon as you get something else going, you could put this straight on top and this would really go. So that one in the meh pile. Now these ones are the Clematis Seedheads. I'm not sure how dry these are, but they're lovely and fluffy. I would expect these to catch a spark. I don't think it's quite dry enough. It's catching the spark nicely. Smells lovely as well. But it's just not igniting. Try making it very fluffy. See if that makes a difference. Yeah, we had fire. Took the spark. Ignited. But I don't think it's dry enough. If it was dry, it would be great. So on to the next one. Dry ferns. I'm expecting this one to work. Yes, lovely and dry. Took the spark, no problem. And that's a hot flame. This next one was those little root things that allow the ivy to climb up trees. They feel nice and dry. And there's quite a nice dust there. So I'll try igniting the dust. Yep, quite a flame there. It did take the spark. It's not perfect. I'm actually feeling some of those bigger bits that don't feel perfectly dry. Definitely a reasonable one. Now this one is the reed mace, also known as cattail, bulrush. It's got all sorts of names. Take some of this out, fluff it up. This should catch a spark. It does. It's a really awkward one to light this. It may work well in conjunction with something else because it's so fine that fire just races around the outside of it. And it never really builds up much heat. See? It's quite a difficult one to light a fire with. Although it does catch a spark and it ignites straight away, it really just burns around the outside and there's nothing here to really hold a flame to generate any sort of heat. That said, if this is used in conjunction with something else, this will certainly take the spark. But it burns out a little bit too quick. We've got a few little dry sticks and leaves. Drop a spark on there, catch the flame. Chuck those on and see if that generates the fire. Yeah we've got it. Took some doing but the good thing is even when the fire races around the outside and it appears to have burned out you've got little little red bits. All you need to do is blow on them and that goes right through all of this stuff and will allow you to light a fire. Yep that's not bad. I would class that tinder as a good one. Right now we've got the sticky jack. It doesn't feel particularly dry, so I'm not holding out much hope for this. It's not dry enough. Now here's the one that feels very, very promising. This is the thistle head, dry thistle head. I didn't just take the fluffy seeds, I actually took the heads as well. I think this is going to be a good one. That's an excellent one. You get the instant catch, and you also get the prolonged flame as well, which is so important. That's a lovely hot flame as well. So the thistle head is an excellent one. Here's another head. This one is the teasel. And this one, like the thistle, has got a good meaty chunk in the middle. And the outer bits should catch the flame. Really, the design of it looks perfect to catch the spark. I don't think that's quite as good as the thistle. The flame didn't really get inside of here like it did with the thistle. Now I'm going to give it another go. I'm going to use this one to catch the flame. And then hopefully broken up ones to hold the flame. Yep, breaking them up definitely helps. That's holding the flame much better. That's going to give your fire a good chance to grow to the next level. Here we go, this is a one from this year. I don't think this is going to be good enough to light fires with, but we'll give it a go. There's a little bit of heat coming off that as well. Very impressed. So teasel heads, excellent. There's one that every man and his dog knows, birch bark. This burns with a lovely hot flame. See the black smoke coming off there? Excellent, really, really hot as well. As far as heat goes, that's the best one so far, by a long way. It caught the spark, it held the spark, and it generated a lot of heat and black smoke. Right, here's our bushcraft fungus, devil's hoof or horse's hoof fungus. I'll dig a little bit of this out on top of the slate, and I'll try and light it from there. And if this doesn't work, I'll try and drop a spark in the hole. Well, it caught the spark. It held a little ember, and by blowing on it, I can get a flame. You mix this with other tinder, and you've got something here that's not going to go out in a hurry. It burns like a wick. I transfer that back to the hole that I dug, and give it a blow. This will catch a light, but it'll smolder. And it'll smolder for hours, and I can take this fire from one place to another. Yeah, that's quite nicely alighting there. Here we go, I've cut a slice off a fresh piece of fungus. This one's still bendy. It's mature, but it's fresh. I'm just going to rough this up and try and light this, because this is just straight off the tree. I've cut a thin section. Now, once I rough it up, I should be able to light this with any luck. Just off the inside of the fungus, we've got a nice hard, velvety sort of textured stuff, and that creates a lovely sort of fluff, and that's what I'm going to use to catch the spark. There you go. That's a fire. On a damp, wet day. Fungus straight off a tree and only using the fire steel and striker created fire. So this one is a good one. Right, the last one and the one I'm least hopeful about is the little fire sticks that I made with the sharp knife. I made these out of hazel with the thought being if they do catch a light they're gonna burn with a hot flame. Now these are not the easiest things in the world to light a fire with. the good as the secondary thing to put on top of your tinder when your tinder's going because they do take a naked flame well but they don't take a spark very well so i may be on a while here well that went better than i could possibly imagine lucky spark hit just the right place and we've got an exceptionally hot fire and the beauty of these is these have got a bit of meat to them as well a lot of woodiness it burns really really hot quickly i'm exceptionally pleased with those because Quite often they are very hard to get going just with a spark so I'm very proud of myself. I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about. I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about. So out of all of those I think I was most impressed with the thistle heads because they took the spark exceptionally easily and burned quite a long time with a hot flame. I was very proud of myself because of the way the fire sticks took. It may have just been luck. I have tried those in the past and they've been really hard to light. That was beautifully dry. The spark must have landed in just the right place. And as soon as it did, it caught a light. And that delivered an exceptionally hot flame. So as far as the heat goes, they were far and away the best. I think all of the things, although I couldn't manage to light the fire with two or three of them, would be pretty good if they were dry enough. Really, at the end of the day, If you can light a fire, and you can do all the useful things that a knife helps you to do, you're well on your way to surviving. Well I hope you've enjoyed this video, I certainly enjoyed the walkout, collecting the tinder, and of course the most important part, lighting the fires. I am intending to do a long-running series of bushcraft videos, there is a few on my YouTube channel, but I want to do more because I practically lived in the woods when I was younger, so this is really, this is in my wheelhouse, so... If you want to see it, chances are I'll have done it before, just not on film, so I can film it and put it out there, and hopefully educate and entertain. If you've liked the video, please click like, and I shall see you next time. Thanks for watching. That's exactly what you're looking for. Hello there. Hello there. Hello. Seed heads from the... Oh yeah. Hello there. Here I am in Upper Palestine.