Tinder " Types & Uses "
Starting a fire is definitely the most important survival skills anyone can learn. Having a fire means the difference between freezing & being warm or it can be the difference eating a cold meal or a hot meal it can also be the difference between Life or Death. When building a fire, there are 3 types of material you will need to gather Tinder, Kindling, & Fuel. Fuel consists of larger pieces of wood & kindling is typically smaller sticks. Kindling is required to get your fuel lit, but tinder starts the whole process off . Tinder is defined as any type of material that will light from a ember or a spark. In order for this to happen, it must be of a fluffy nature and dry or it must have some type of accelerant.
What Is Tinder?
Tinder is a material used to ignite fires that catches fire real easily, such as dryer lint , fatwood, paper, charcloth, cotton balls & natural materials such as cedar bark dried moss, birch bark, fatwood, and many others.
What Is Kindling ?
Kindling is the next size up from tender, and as such it needs to be smaller than a typical sticks used for firewood. Kindling is used to keep a fire going once it has been initially lit and could be made from materials like small branches or twigs & or shavings. it is important that you use dry kindling, as wet or green kindling will only serve to dampen your fire.
Choosing Your Tinder
The first thing to know about tender that moisture is not your friend
What you want from your tender is preferably is to be dry and fluffy. The more moisture content it has , the less likely it is to catch decently enough to ignite the kindling , if it can catch at all. When searching for it, try to find the driest material as possible, if your carrying it with you, take measures to keep it dry what you can do also is bring it from home if needed otherwise you can find in the wild that will also make a good tinder.
Choosing Kindling
Kindling is larger than tinder, made to capture a fire going for the short term being placed on top of the tinder. The idea being the use of kindling is that is small enough to catch fire from the burning tinder and large enough to burn for a long period of time to allow the larger wood to catch.
When it comes to choosing the wood for your kindling , softwood, such as pine is better than hard wood. Soft wood will be easier to split & burn more easily . Again, it is critical that your kindling is dry. Nothing defeats the creation of a fire like moisture. if the wood is wet then split it and use the dry portion kindling is not very big in terms of size. It is generally fairly small, thin twigs or sticks or larger wood splinters. You want your kindling to range in diameter from size of a match to the size of a pencil. If you can`t snap it with your hands then it probably is to thick to effectively get the fire going another option is to use your knife to carve your own feather sticks.
​
