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Wednesday, November 02, 2011

How To Prepare Char Clothes

A char clothes is like a charcoal. Only different spelling.
OK. That was lame.
Joke aside, char clothes functions very well like charcoal, they will aid with fire building. But as charcoal is big and heavy to lug around, having the lighter more versatile char clothes might make your fire-building life a bit easier.
Here is a step by step method to make char clothes.
1. obtain some fabric, likely old cotton t-shirts will be the best. Stay away from polyester or any synthetic material as they will disintegrate during the process.
2. Cut/shred the fabric into about 1inch x 1 inch size. You can make them bigger of course, but i like my char clothes uniformly sized. Bigger char clothes burns longer, but they what matters here is the size/ease to carry.
3. Obtain a tin that can be closed. I used to keep those lozenges tin that store jujube lozenges. Or you can get those can that store the other throat lozenges such as Deqoudin. If you can't find anyone of them, a small tin can will do the trick too. Make sure they are clean inside.
4. Poke a small hole, as small as a pen tip size or just a knock of a nail onto the tin. This will be the "breathing hole" for the process.
5. Now, pack the cut/shredded cloth into the tin. Careful not to overfill them. It is best to fill them up with space between them. Typically, you can fit up to about 10pieces into one tin.
6. Now, fire up your gas stove and placed the metal tin over the fire - with the hole you poke facing up.
7. Within a couple of minutes, you will get smoke shooting out from the hole, let the process continue until the smoke stops coming out. Kill your gas stove and leave the tin there to cool.
8. After about 10minutes, the tin will cool down and safe to the touch.
9. Open up the tin and you will see blackened cloth. These are char clothes and can be used  as fire-starter or tinder.
10. remove them and placed into small zip lock back to be used in your next excursion outdoor to start a fire like a man!
Alternative:
When you do your laundry - there will be lint or residue of clothes that will be sieved by the washing process. Remove these lint, dry them out and they make excellent tinder as well. :) Happy trying!

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