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Bush Craft & Wilderness Survival Articles, Gear Reviews & Videos |
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The next day I awoke to ideal conditions. The sky was clear and blue, the temperature was in the low 20’s and there was an eight mile per hour breeze blowing. I had left the ice lens in the forest covered with a few leaves to protect it from the snow. On a short walk through the forest I collected three types of dry grass and a species of weed with fluffy seed heads covered in short wool. This was fine material for several tinder balls but I found nothing to use as primary tinder, more on that later.
I normally carry a small tin of char cloth in my kit and decided to use a piece of that. I figured that if I couldn’t get char cloth to ignite that I would waste my day attempting with the natural materials I had collected. I prepared my tinder ball with grass wrapped around a small handful of the fluffy weed seed heads to act as a coal extender. Holding the char cloth in the lid of the tin to prevent my wet hands from touching it, it took a total of 19 seconds to ignite! That was a happy surprise. Blowing the heat of the char cloth through the weed tops quickly brought the tinder bundle to flame. In total my very first ice lens produced open flame in 65 seconds using char cloth as my primary tinder. Later attempts to ignite the weed seed heads only resulted in seeds snapping in the heat and small wisps of smoke but no coal. It was very difficult to focus the beam into a confused mass of tinder. It is much better to use a tinder that presents a flat surface.
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