How To Make Char in Your Hands for Flint and Steel (No Container)

While a char tin can be a very useful tool, there is always more than one way to accomplish a task, and you don’t necessarily need a metal container to make charred material. With conventional charring, the material is heated to combustion temperature in an oxygen-deprived environment, but that’s the not the only way.

If you make sure that your material is dry, you can also ignite it in the open air and deprive it of oxygen afterwards. There are lots of ways approach this without a tin. I have had good luck sandwiching smoldering material between pieces of bark and burying it in the sand, wrapping it in leaves, and have even made viable material in pieces of kelp.

Some of you may recognize this concept from a previous video. I rushed that one to help some friends who were participating in a challenge and was never very happy with how it came out. This idea is useful enough that it was easy to justify redoing it in case this version is more helpful.

This is about as simple as it gets. Making a somewhat airtight seal with your hands should extinguish the smoldering punk wood before it consumes itself. If you position it right, you won’t get burned, but any portion in contact with your skin will likely go out soon anyway, so you probably won’t get burned. My hands are pretty tough, but I’ve never come away with even a sore spot, much less a blister.

I’ve tried this at least a half dozen times now, and it’s reliable as long as you take care to dry out the punk before you char it. In this case I held it for almost exactly a minute in my hands to put it out.

Burying it works too, but you do risk adding moisture into it, which would almost certainly be an issue this time of year. You might be tempted to snuff it out with pressure, compressed sections of punk don’t take a spark as well; so depriving it of oxygen produce a better finished product.

If you’re not familiar with the utility of charring material, it will take a weak spark from a locally found stone and a piece of carbon steel. Being able to make charred material makes fire a lot easier than it would be if you had to rely on a bow drill. Of course we all have lighters and ferro rods, but we’re playing bushcraft here.

Thanks to Iz Turley and the participants in his Hardwoodman Challenges for introducing me to the concept of charring without a tin, and inspiring these experiments.

This was a piece of fresh gathered black cottonwood punk that I dried next to the fire. I used a piece of quartz from the riverbed and a carbon steel striker to light it up after charring.

Music: Luca Stricagnoli – The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA