Uploaded August 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
I have started playing around with primitive archery, and scraping down the limbs of my new bow left me with big pile of fire-dried vine maple fluff that was so thin it would turn to powder if I ground it between my fingers.
Using the blade or spine of your knife to make scrapings from wood is a great option for catching sparks from a ferro rod, but I realized that I had never tried charring them so that they would take the much weaker sparks from flint and steel.
Knowing that the would likely shrink down, I packed my char tin full of them to the point where I could barely close the lid and cooked the tin over the flames of my little stove until the smoke pouring out of the hole started slowing down.
I was happy to open the tin and find a perfectly charred solid puck that while somewhat fragile, held itself together well. I used a piece of quartz from the riverbed and the spine of the ESEE Laser Strike to send sparks onto the puck and it caught immediately. Some materials that easily take a spark also burn up quickly, but this stuff seemed to smolder very slowly unless it received forced oxygen; which is a great characteristic for a charred material. When I did fan it with my hat or blow on it, it quickly grew into one solid ember that easily lit up a bundle of poorly processed cottonwood bark.
I have had good luck charring fine curls before, but they are much more delicate and smolder individually, where these scrapings acted as one giant coal. Some woods make thin scrapings like these easily and some respond better to curls, but if you have a scrape-friendly piece of wood or are making a bow this way, this appears to be an outstanding alternative to punkwood and charred bark.
I’m sure that I’m not the first to try this, but it was new to me. This material would probably be harder to char without a metal container, but I’ll play around with that soon.
instagram.com/nwprimate
Materials Used
Bow and scrapings: Green cut, fire-dried, big leaf maple (Acer circinatum)
Knives: Stainless Mora Companion and ESEE Laser Strike
Stove: Pocket Cooker
Tinder Bundle: Black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa)
I have started playing around with primitive archery, and scraping down the limbs of my new bow left me with big pile of fire-dried vine maple fluff that was so thin it would turn to powder if I ground it between my fingers.
Using the blade or spine of your knife to make scrapings from wood is a great option for catching sparks from a ferro rod, but I realized that I had never tried charring them so that they would take the much weaker sparks from flint and steel.
Knowing that the would likely shrink down, I packed my char tin full of them to the point where I could barely close the lid and cooked the tin over the flames of my little stove until the smoke pouring out of the hole started slowing down.
I was happy to open the tin and find a perfectly charred solid puck that while somewhat fragile, held itself together well. I used a piece of quartz from the riverbed and the spine of the ESEE Laser Strike to send sparks onto the puck and it caught immediately. Some materials that easily take a spark also burn up quickly, but this stuff seemed to smolder very slowly unless it received forced oxygen; which is a great characteristic for a charred material. When I did fan it with my hat or blow on it, it quickly grew into one solid ember that easily lit up a bundle of poorly processed cottonwood bark.
I have had good luck charring fine curls before, but they are much more delicate and smolder individually, where these scrapings acted as one giant coal. Some woods make thin scrapings like these easily and some respond better to curls, but if you have a scrape-friendly piece of wood or are making a bow this way, this appears to be an outstanding alternative to punkwood and charred bark.
I’m sure that I’m not the first to try this, but it was new to me. This material would probably be harder to char without a metal container, but I’ll play around with that soon.
instagram.com/nwprimate
Materials Used
Bow and scrapings: Green cut, fire-dried, big leaf maple (Acer circinatum)
Knives: Stainless Mora Companion and ESEE Laser Strike
Stove: Pocket Cooker
Tinder Bundle: Black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa)
