Make a Leather Tinder Pouch | Bushcraft Kit (Tutorial)

Description

In this episode of Shed Sunday I show you how to make a leather tinder pouch to store dry tinder for your bushcraft kit. These traditional leather bags have a rustic feel to them and are very simple and easy to make with minimal tools.

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Leather is durable and waterproof. Which is essential for a tinder bag as you need to keep you tinder material as dry as possible. Be it dried grass, tree bark, a fungus or any tinder material.

HOW I MADE IT:

- Using an off cut of leather, I cut it into a circular shape of around 12 to 15 inches in diameter.

- I then used a leather punch to punch holes around the edge of the leather, roughly every 1 inch.

- I then used some leather cord or string to feed through the holes, making sure that at the end, the leather cord comes out of individual holes.

- I then fastened a red deer antler toggle which is used to keep the bag pinched down and to prevent your tinder fire lighting material from dropping out.

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Video Transcription

and today we're making a leather tinder pouch so this is the tinder pouch that we're about to make this is a leather tinder pouch that I made couple years ago now on ta outdoors they're dead simple to make where he's not making another videos because there's actually a simpler a faster way of making it which I'm going to show you now but before I do it's probably worth explaining what a tinder powder his tinder pouch is simply something that you put your tinder in tinder being natural material that you would normally use for fire lighting things such as dry grass this stuff birch bark tree bark any natural fire lighting material you can make them to any size I don't really like to go much bigger than this this one is a 15 inch diameter tinder pouch the one we're making today is going to be slightly smaller it's very simple it has a little toggle there which can loosen and tighten the tinder bag all you do to open it is just pull on the sides around the edge and it should open nice and easily so you can access your contents great fun to make they're simple to make all you need is an offcut of leather you can make them out of other materials such as canvas but leathers a bit more aesthetic on your screen now you will be seeing a picture of the tools that you need very simple scissors obviously you're off custom leather a leather punch but you can use a hole punch it's just the leather punch is a lot simpler and easier to use some string a tape measure a toggle in this case I'm going to use a red deer antler some string and I didn't put it in this picture but also a pencil or pen to mark out on the leather so I have my piece of leather here this is just calf leather I believe it's about I'd say 2 mil thick maybe yeah 2 mil pliable pretty flexible stuff it's in I don't know chocolate brown or something like that I'm gonna mark out the circle of the size for the tinder pouch normally mine are about 15 inches in diameter but I don't think I'm going to get 15 inches out of this no it's quite a bit so I'm actually gonna go right down to a small tinder pouch for this one and do a 12 inch diameter and I can see that that's going to go across at the narrowest point of this leather winters should be fine so in order to get a circle and this is where I sort of made a mistake last time as I took ages drawing a diameter there is actually a much quicker way so I have here some just garden twine you can use any string that you want and I'm just going to measure half of that 12 inches which is obviously six inches maybe a little bit more maybe seven just to allow for tying knots got a screwdriver here gonna tie just a simple Slipknot all I'm going to do actually with this side it's just a double overhand knot I just double checked that they do measure six inches at the point it doesn't have to be exact but that is six inches took the leather out nice and then I'm drawing on the kind of suede side the inside it's going to pop the screwdriver in the middle I'm not putting any too much pressure down just check that it's gonna be able to swing keep it nice and straight and he has to be rough there's a bit of a it's just a rough gauge trying to keep it all level

there we go very scissors cut a circle out

what I need to do now is draw mark out some dots about one inch down and one inch across from each other all the way around the edge of this tinder pouch now this is obviously set if I ping this in the middle and that the edge back there yeah this is set at six inches but I need to come an inch in just gonna wind my pen in a bit like so hold the screwdriver so just round a pen in like that just to bring it in an inch or so and then all I'm going to do mark a dot like that every few inches every inch or so sorry it's not exact doesn't have to be exact

before I punch the right hole in I need to check that the cordage actually fits in here so it's a good idea to just go around and check that it fits at fixin it fits in the 4 mil hole will it fit in a three and a half mil hole no it won't fit in that three and a half mil so it's got to be a four mil punch in order for that to go through in fact I may go for a four and a half mil just because it might be a bit easier I mean use the four and a half mil hole but I've got to click it round just to get it level first just it just one click there's a hole come across they're not exactly Martin inch it doesn't have to be exact one click there's a hole and it's really quite speedy process being thin lever just go round nice and easy down the holes all I need to do now is thread the cordage through I'm just gonna use one side and I'm gonna go in try and pull most of it through to begin with because you're going to need to work you're going to need to make this stretch all the way around so you want to sort of leave color of inches this side and I'm just going to weave in and out with this cordage like a shoelace very easy all the way through the edge of this tinder pouch so it's obviously fairly straightforward so I'm going to time-lapse this and then I'll show you the finishing touches so we've made it out and they're both coming out of separate holes like that which is what you want because when you push your toggle down it will pinch the tin of our coats however what I do is I actually stamp a hole in between these last two holes here you don't have to but I personally like to do it because I feel it seals the tinder bag a little bit more when you close it up so just punch a hole there and I actually just try and tuck them through they're kind of a little bit closer to each other these holes like that so to give it some shape when you do it up I just ran the load of stuff in there anything towel cloth tins just to help give it some shape when you pull it tight naturally it will gather this shape over time but you want to just do it to begin with just so you can get an idea of how it's going to pull together say I think that's okay I think that's that's certainly good enough but that's basically the finished tinder pouch and when you need to get in it you just pull pull around different areas and there you go you've got access to whatever you want to put in there at this stage now and you pull it tight and naturally wants to open you can see there and actually wants to creep open so we need to put a toggle in here just at the front there to help seal it and pinch it tight for my toggle what I'm using is a piece of antler you can use literally anything you want this is a piece of red deer and

I've drilled a hole in there JC's barking so what I'm going to do is feed the two pieces of leather cord here I need to feed both ends through here and then tie an overhand knot so they're both three now I'm going to tie an overhand knot this side of the cordage to stop the toggle slipping off that's simple keep them together wrapping around each other push both tag ends three pull it tight like that really it's the world's most simple knot granny knot and just stopping right it's adding as a stock or not really stops that toggle now slipping off the end essentially now that I've got that toggle here pinned in I can pull it all tight slip I like to pull it tight first like that the tinder bag and then use the toggle slide it down and that toggle just keeps little tight and you'll see that it just stops it undoing I can pull it tight let go another bag stays shut you can wrap that round sometimes if you leave enough tagging you can wrap it round and put it back over the toggle I haven't done on this one but I've done it on my previous ones and you can decorate it with bits of cow bone on the end or anything that you want really that's it though that's how simple it is it's really dead easy to make you just need to get yourself a piece of leather usually off cuts if you look online you can find off cuts of leather or speak to a local factory maybe or something like that that's how to make leather tinder pouch let's take a look at it so here is an example of tinder pouches that I've made in the past this is my main one that I use in all my videos this is a couple years old and you can see that the difference in this kind of new leather this is the one I just made it's obviously it's it's not shiny it's not worn and cracked whereas if you look at the difference here this one much more worn much more sort of stressed and it makes it a lot more flexible really the leather is a lot softer where it's been used as the difference is there's one that's slightly different leather it's kind of like that fake leather stuff there and there's another different sized one there slightly smaller again I've added things to them this one has a bit of cow bone red Dino deer antler there you can customize them as you want this one is a small one and again off pieces of off cuts of pieces of leather I've used the stoppers like the toggles here there's another bit of antler there as a toggle but like I use that toggle there you can't just use the piece of leather to help cinch it down it is a little bit more difficult to pull it back off afterwards they but that's a slightly smaller scale one so what I store in them I mean for example this is just random things I still random things in them this one is all my cordage all pieces of leather cordage that scraps have leather cords that I've collected or had off cuts of mostly cordage even some old shoelaces one here I keep on white pieces of Flint and limpet shells for bow drills so that's just where I keep those I know where everything is in the shed I know where everything is it's not a mess it seems a mess but it's not it's tidy this one is kind of my cloths and rags which I use with boiled linseed oil and things like that just generally in seed oil some shoe polish randomly another oily rag that I used to just wipe down things knives things like that this one had what exactly what I was putting in it earlier this is my leather work one so some mink oil rag there's some other leather items taken out of it for now

but that's kind of my leatherworking tinder pouch and this is my main bushcraft one which you see in all the videos and in here I just have actual tinder so things like dried grass here a limpet shell a tin chart in with some char cloth this comes on me wherever I go bushcrafting I've always got this one on me in my bag some birch bark rolled up with an elastic band holding it together amazing fire fire lighting material natural fire lighting material highly resinous holds a flame really well and the pine pitch this is again natural fire lighting material and glue natural glue primitive glue this is playing pitch which I made from the resin from a pine tree sets like a rock once you melt it down you can add ash to it as well which binds it a bit better makes it a bit stronger so that's my main tinder pouch and that's really what I tend to pouch is for is for tinder but you can use them for anything as you can see from my other ones here so that is it I hope you enjoyed this small tutorial on how to make your own leather tinder pouch it's a great project if you've got kids get them out there have a go if you remember the scouts and you're teaching kids get them out there have a go at making a leather tinder pouch it's an awesome project it's fun for the family it's fun for you guys out there and your sheds on a Sunday morning thank you so much for watching this episode of shed Sunday hit that subscribe button

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