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Fire School Part 14 Rub Cloth

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

morning folks Dave Canterbury with the Pathfinder school what I thought we'd do today is continue with our fire school series a little bit I want to go back and show you a little bit more 18th century technology per se what we're going to do today is we're going to make rub cloth and we've talked about a lot of different ignition methods in this series we talked about friction fire all the way through to the ferrocerium rod so now let's go back and look at a few tips and tricks that we can use with different ignition methods to help us ensure that we have a fire even in conditions that may not be optimal and rub cloth is something that you can make if you have gunpowder available it is very reminiscent of the way that cannon fuses used to be made we're going to make that today we're going to use that for ignition purposes in a marginal birdnest stay with me we'll get started okay so the precedents of rub cloth basically is we're going to take a piece of regular 100% natural material like a cotton linen osnabrück something like that something that we have with us and we're going to impregnate this with black powder and you can't use smokeless powder for this you can't use pyro Dex but I'm going to use the dub the triple left powder right out of my powder horn for my flintlock for this and what we're going to do is we're going to wet the cloth or the gun powder itself and we're going to make it moist and kind of mushy and then we're going to smear it into the cloth and when we're finished with it it's going to look something like this once it dries it will be a gray color cloth so let's get this ready and we'll get some rub cloth made and then we'll demonstrate to you how it works so all we need to make this rub cloth like I said is we need a piece of material that's made out of natural material so it's got to be cotton linen eisenberg something like that and then we need a little bit of water and we need some powder and we can just take our horn and pour some powder out here on this stump just like that and then we're just going to take and wet our cloth a little bit I like to get my cloth damp better to do that for me that works out better for me to just get that cloth nice and damp and kind of wring it out a little bit and then smear the cloth into the powder like this and just saturate that cloth with the black powder once you've got it completely blackened like this you pretty much have what you want and then you're just going to lay that out to dry and when it's finished it will look like this we should be able to ignite this in a lot of different ways if we're trying to stay with 18th century ignition methods we would use flint and steel we could also use a magnifying glass but if we were using modern equipment we could also use our ferrocerium rod our ferrocerium rod would ignite this very very quickly because the sparks are obviously a lot hotter than a sparkling Flint of Steel but we're going to try to use traditional flint and steel for this today and with flint and steel the closer you get to the material that you're dropping sparks on to the better off you are because as the sparks drop obviously a cool-down so we want to get kind of right on top of that material if we can just strike our sparks onto it and it's gonna you can see how that goes up and now that whole piece is actually burning and it's burning very slowly but it's burning very hot because it is gunpowder so it's burning a lot hotter than a normal embryo would probably burn because you have the Gunpowder accelerant so a piece of char cloth would not burn near this hot so something like this is going to be very good for a more marginal type tinder bundle and we'll get us a little bird nest together awesome stuff we've got laying out here on the ground and we'll test that theory okay so I've picked up some poplar out here off the ground in a couple different areas this was laying over in the side of the woods probably left there by some other class that was out here Ian's definitely got moisture in it no question about that like that's been laying directly on the ground but we'll process this down we don't need the whole thing probably for this well says some of that to the side and then we'll just kind of process this down and the key to any bird nest as we talked about in the past or tinder bundle is to break this thing down to the finest fibers that we can get so that we have the maximum amount of surface area for combustion the fine fibers are going to combust much quicker than the heavier fibers or the Bark's the outer box so we'll split this down and the more we do this the more we're actually drying out the material as well taking your time to make a correct bird's nest or tinder bundle in my opinion is a huge factor in the effectiveness of your ability to make a fire sometimes the ember is the easy part in this case you'll see it's a really easy part

but getting something combustible to combine with that number just sometimes the trick and we'll shred this down really really good and then we'll get started all right so once we have our bird nest ready now we're just going to take a piece of our rub cloth and I've cut this off this is less than a full piece and I'm just going to put that inside the nest and try to start strike my sparks down into that cloth while it's in the nest there we go okay folks well that was just a real quick tutorial on how to make rub cloth and how to utilize rub cloth remember that you're dealing with black powder black powder is dangerous so you need to use caution when you're making rub cloth and utilizing rub cloth the other thing that you need to remember is you never want to put rub cloth on top of your flint and strike your steel on it you want that away from your hands because it's going to burn a lot hotter because of the accelerant it will give you a third-degree burn just like that

so you want to make sure you get that away from you on the ground on a stump in your bird nest and strike down into that don't ever hold it on top of the flint and try to ignite it in your hand I'm Dave Canterbury at the path iron school I appreciate your support I appreciate your views I thank you for everything you do for our school for our family for our business for all of our sponsors instructors affiliates and friends and I'll be back with another video as soon as I can thanks guys

you

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About the Author

wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

Here you can explore the world of survival knives, survival kits and simple tips on outdoor self-reliance. We are always learning and enjoy passing on the knowledge we acquire.

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