Making a Leather Tinder Pouch by Hand

Description

I've had a lot of questions over on the Bushcraft Camp Update Series about the Leather Tinder pouch that I have which I keep my fire lighting materials in. So I though I would show you how I make them in a video. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks for watching - Mike.

Video Transcription

welcome to the totally awesome outdoor show or TA outdoors for sure I've had a lot of questions recently on my bushcraft camp update series about the leather tinder pouch that I use this leather tinder pouch I've had it for a couple of years now and I made it from hand it's actually very very simple to make but it's a lovely item it's got that authentic look to it and the fact that it's made of leather and it's handmade makes you appreciate it all the much more this is one I made earlier and it took about about an hour to make and I'm going to show you back at home how I made this so to begin with all I've got is a bit of leather lacing here you can you can use paracord if you want to but this is just some leather cord basically and this is a piece of bread deer antler there which I use as a stopper I didn't lose I had a bit another here as a stopper but I've actually lost that part to come off so I need to make another bit there just as a stop to use as a stopper really to pinch it closed and here again is a piece of that red deer antler there so all you do is open it it's very simple you pull that cord and it's easy to open by just putting the side parts of the pouch there and this is basically where I keep all my tinder such as birch bark a few cramp bulls and things like that and any other pieces of tinder that I find out there it's actually very simple to make and I'll show you now with a new piece of leather where to begin okay so the tools that I use are here in front of me and this is the equipment that you generally need to make your leather tip out although you can use less so obviously first thing I've got the leather piece here which I will talk about in a minute I have some leather lace or some leather cordage here to kind of different types I have pair of scissors a pen and tape measure red deer antler they're a piece of cow bone there you can obviously use what you please and some leather hole punching pliers which are actually very very useful you can do the leather punching with actual leather punch and half but this is just a little bit quicker and easier to use so that's the general equipment that I use and now I'll just talk a little bit the leather itself so this is a piece of leather that I got online and it's not a huge piece of leather but it's enough to at least get probably to tinder pouches at the same size that I've got maybe a bit more if I'm doing smaller leather tinder pouches it's genuine leather calfskin and the color is basically well it's like a brown chestnut see Brown I really like the kind of chestnut brown color on leather you can get off cuts of leather on eBay and things like that for really really cheap so you just got to look around it's pleasant looking around there are really expensive pieces of leather out there but as a tinder pallet you really don't need something that's very expensive the first thing you need to decide is how big you want your leather tinder puffs now if you guys are trying to make one there's a similar size to mine which is this one here this is 15 inches in diameter if I stretch that out when it's flat it's 15 inches in diameter now that's a fair bit of leather that one if you try to put 15 inches here you can see that that's probably going to use most of that chunk there now I'll actually want to make the next leather tinder pouch slightly smaller because that's that first one is as big as I'd like so I'm going to take two inches off that and make it 13 inches in diameter now rather than cut the diameter of your leather right out of the middle because generally the offcuts of leather that you do get a not perfectly round or perfectly square they're just off cuts you need to use the space wisely so try if you can and head over to the side and just check how much of 13 diameters which is here I can get so rather than go and use all that in the middle are then wasted all this space around here which I could have used you want to maximize the resources that you have so if I lock my tape measure on 13 inches I can check that yeah it's going to fit there and if six and a half roughly is there that's my middle point then yep I'm going to get pretty much a good chunk out of that and still have something left maybe another 30

it is over here so next thing I need to do is market so to maximize my piece of leather I'm going to go to pretty much the narrows point there to see if it can fit and actually at 13 inches that can just about fit now I know that this part over here is longer than this part so I should be safe so using going right to the edge again to maximize what I can use I'm going to market six-and-a-half inches which is obviously half of 13 but a mark about the top up here just a little circle it's quite hard for you guys to see but I can see it and then without a bit just at 13 inches little dot there that's one side of my circle done but all I'm going to do is from the middle at six-and-a-half just keep going round so I'll always keep the middle on six-and-a-half and every couple of inches I'm just going to draw a dot from that middle circle okay so I can just play six-and-a-half do a little go up here and I know that eventually it's going to start to curve around because I'm not great at math guys I'm not going to draw a perfect circle with some sort of protractor and compass let's just do it old-school and just mark around every few inches at six and half inches now you can join the dots together in a slight curve and it does help too but if you don't want to and you feel you're confident with scissors then that's absolutely fine go ahead and crack on with the scissors and just you know use the dots as a guesstimate really and once you've got that rough circle you're then ready to cut with scissors bear in mind that I've done this on the inside of my tinder powder I want that better material on the outside for it's waterproof ability and things like that so I haven't marked the outside I've just marked the inside okay so here is the outline of my leather tinder pouch it's not a perfect circle there's some jaggedy edges but that doesn't matter so again with my pen and my tape measure you can use a ruler we're going to do this from the edge of the leather there at one inch down I'm just going to go put a dot there and I'm going to go now that this is all ballpoint figures here if I go one inch across there and then roughly do dot there's no point going one inch exactly one it's their office leaving a perfect circle perfect lot you can do that but you can always check it afterwards but to me you could do it as a guesstimate and just go round in a curve and you'll roughly get where one inches from the distance well you'll know where one inch is once you've done one inch there you can roughly go round and just do it by hand takes a lot less time but obviously it's not as specific have a great thing about these hole punch pliers is that they have the different millimeter settings of the holes that they punch nice and clear on this orange panel here you can get these really cheap after they can go to 5 pounds things like that you can get them quite cheap and you can find them online I just found this online and they're they're widely available and or you it's got different ways that you can use it you can rotate so that this is where the area is going to punch down here and you can just rotate like this to choose the setting that you want now the great thing about these is that I can use with my cordage here I can test if it fits in any of these so it doesn't fit in the three and a half mil doesn't fit in the four mil but at the four and a half mil which is the large setting that leather cordage there could fit so I know that if I punch a hole there's four and a half mil the cordage is going to easily slide through the actual leather tinder pouch here once it's made so just a little tip thing are very very useful tool you can use them for all sorts and they're much much easier and simpler to use than your traditional kind of leather punches so I'm now going to use this and go around the edge where I've made the holes go around the edge line it all up and then if you can see this but I'm going to line that for example that hold up you've got to line up with the tip of your punching pliers get it lined up and then squeeze and you barely have to squeeze

pull that away get rid of the excess and now you get your seat right there a perfect round hole with very limited physical exertion needed now I'm going to do the rest Jeff my dog barking hope you guys can see that there's all the holes are punched in there one inch down one inch across very very easy that took me less than a minute to do so once you've thread your leather cord through you need to obviously make sure you've got length up here to hold it you can flip it over this is my inside bit what I like to do just to help give the tinder pouch some shape is just put a little cup of cover bits in there and it just helps that when you pull it together

you don't know roughly what you're going to put in there and that's what it looks like

tight and done now I'll just loosen it a little bit just because I would put more in there normally and then at the ends if they don't match up cut them level so that they do match up and what you can do is what I've done here is I've actually just off from the off cut of a piece of this leather the same lever I've just punched the hole I'll cut a square out and I push the hole with the punching pliers and that basically acts as a buffer just to help pinch it'll and sensual tight when you do put it tight and this goes on before you put on the red deer antler so just fill this through and it's a little bit difficult tricky at first but once it's on this is not going to come off I'm not going to take this off and there you go that just slides down nice and easy now right to the end pull that tight put it right to the end there we go that's there there it blends in quite nicely this is just a piece of red deer antler here and I've drilled probably about five millimeter or four millimeter hole in it just to the end there it's quite tricky to drill through a deer antler or just a matter of general you need to use a vise you have to be very careful and what I'm going to do this is for aesthetics looks and practicality as well because it helps cinch the bag close and keep it place just got to feed it on there slide it down up towards the buffer bead like that and then I've got a bit cow bone here you can use carved sticks just general sticks with a hole drilled in them you can use all sorts of beads and anything like that and I'm going to tie two overhand knots I'll show you why in a minute

first I'm going to tie is going to be down here just the using both ends of the cord just an overhand knot I'm not going to put it too tight just yet I don't want to put a tee tight because I need room up here to be able to tie this knot here then I just slide on my carbine like say and then this knots always quite difficult you need to leave some room and I'm tying a garden off up here so Mike alibi is tied on again you can put anything you like on the end here you can decorate it with beads and each other I could snip off that tag in there but I was going to leave that okay so I need to take it off and put something else on so that's more for aesthetics looks but it also as you wrap it round you can use the cord to wrap around and keep it close like that but this also just helps if you want it to hang it up and carry it see it's nice and visible so to open it again you just grab the red deer antlers grab a red deer antler and the leather buffer pull them back all the way to the end so they stop against the cowboy at all whatever you've got there and so open the bags can be quite tricky be just pull wherever its bunched up and scrub start you just pull and realistically I want me to open it really any more than that if you do as you can see there's pretty much maxed out against there and it's open nicely get all my bits in and out quite easily any bits of tinder anything that you forage or for that and you can see it's already got that shape already and then to push it close just grab the red deer antler like that put it and then all slides closed and there we go this house make a Levitan ouch you

Written on 18 November 2016.

About the Author

TA Outdoors

Bushcraft, Wild Camping, Wilderness Hiking Trips, Solo Overnight Camps, Shooting, Hunting and Backpacking. My dog joins me on some of the trips. His name is Jaxx.

My name is Mike. And I'm addicted to adventure...

Check out our other YouTube Channel TAFishing: https://www.youtube.com/user/TAFishing

Making a Leather Tinder Pouch by Hand

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