Making Char Cloth for Starting Fires

Char cloth is nothing more than a natural cotton cloth burned without oxygen. This results in a high carbon material that can catch the slightest spark from a flint and steel, a bow drill friction fire starter, or even a fire piston. (More on this later.) I’ve never used anything but 100% pure cotton drill, so I’m not sure how well any other natural fibers will work.

I start off by cutting the cotton cloth into manageable square pieces, and pack them in an old cookie tin that’s been prepared for this task. The only prep work needed is to remove the lid from the tin and flip it over. Using a large nail, I punch a single hole from the inside of the lid to make an ersatz “chimney” for smoke to go out of.

I place the cookie tin (with a tight fitting lid) on a small fire, and wait. Pretty soon you’ll see a column of white smoke coming out of the punched hole. This smoke is flammable gasses as the heat converts the cloth into carbon, and burns off any volatiles.

Avoid getting the tin so hot that the smoke itself catches fire because you will “overcook”and burn the cloth too much…. Rendering the cloth useless and brittle. Another good tip is don’t pack the tin completely full. Lay the pieces in loosely so they can combust inside the tin without providing cooler spaces between the cloth.

Once the tin stops smoking, carefully remove it from the fire and allow it to cool on it’s own. Removing the lid while it’s still hot allows air to get to the cloth and it will all catch fire. You’ll be left with nothing but ashes — whereas the best char cloth is thin flexible squares of carbon.

The best made char cloth can catch the tiniest spark and smolder. You can place this into your tinder bundle, hold it above face level, and gently blow into it. The smoldering cloth will increase it’s heat and set the tinder bundle on direct open flames.

I’ve found that char cloth makes the absolute best tinder to use in a fire piston. This piston uses the diesel effect of compressed air to ignite the material for getting a camp fire going.