Make Better Char Cloth: Twist Before Charring

An easy trick to help you make better char cloth. One of the many reasons that I prefer charring natural materials instead of cloth is that while it is easy to light, the thin sheets don’t have a lot of burn time or heat to them, where a smoldering piece of punk wood packs a more energy. Charred cotton catches a spark better than almost anything else, but can be a challenge to use with less than ideal tinder bundle materials.

You can get the best of both worlds by twisting the material in a quick reverse-wrap before charring. This gives you a much thicker ember to work with, and you can break off as much as you think you will need to ignite your bundle and snuff out the rest in your tin.

I used a black t-shirt for this demonstration, which isn’t ideal as it doesn’t look all that different before and after charring but it is what I had available.

As with anything, there are some downsides to this method. On advantage to using flat sheets of cloth is that they sit so nicely on a flat stone, where these pieces of char require a bit more finesse to hold in place without crumbling them. The final product is a bit brittle, so you may find conventional char cloth easier to use during the sparking stage.

This method also uses quite a bit of material, although I only twisted one of the strands that I cut; but if you were in a situation where you were cutting your only t-shirt; it might make more sense to be more efficient and use small squares to conserve the material.

So far I have only tried this with t-shirt material, but I expect it should work equally well with denim. I may also try braiding some cloth before charring it just for fun, but I’m not sure I there would be any advantage.

I have honestly only made a few batches of char cloth in my life, so I am no expert on the cooking process, but I like to remove it before the smoke stops coming from the hole in the tin and have always had good results with that approach.

As with all things bushcraft, there really is nothing new under the sun. I thought this was an original idea but after trying it I did some searching online and found an old post on the BCUSA forums by my buddy Coryphene where he recommended this same thing. I'm sure others have tried this as well, but I still wanted to share it in case it is helpful.

Materials Used

100% Cotton T-Shirt
Metal Charring Tin
Pocket Cooker Stove
Mora Clipper Stainless
Red Alder Curls Tinder Bundle
Carbon Steel Striker
Quartz

Music

Take Me to the Depths - Midnight North
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Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
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