How to Identify, Harvest, Extract and Process Amadou For Fire Lighting !

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Video Transcription

everyone in this video because of many demands I'm going to show you how to identify the amma do what it looks like in the fungus where to find it and also how to extract it how to process it now i'm not going to use that big piece that you saw me find you know the large piece for a simple reason that people want to see what it you know normally looks like in the bush also we're going to be talking about you know different trees that you can find it on now this fungus has typically two names the most popular name is horses poop right because that's what it looks like and also depending on your area people call it also the horseshoe fungus sometimes you'll find it a little bit more flat and it looks like a horseshoe so anyways i'm gonna go out for the hunt so stay tuned alright just before i start talking about you know the horses who fungus or horseshoe fungus let me just talk a little bit about the types of trees that you will find it you will find it in the birch family of trees you will find it also in the maple tree specifically the sugar maple tree and you can also find it on the beech tree any tree that produces you know drinkable sap in the spring now what you see right now in front of us or in front of you is a typical you know yellow birch now what you look in the fungus this is what it looks like there show you a few more here this one looks like a horse is who right that's why it was named that way usually there are a darker color like this the top is very hard very dark sometimes it's a little lighter just another tip try and find them on trees well the one that the ones you want to harvest you want to find them on trees that are still alive for a simple reason that you'll be pretty sure this is good actually I can see some a Madhu right here sticking out but anyway that'll be another try and find out in live trees cuz sometimes you know even on a dead tree you can find this and it'd still be good but we don't know how long that tree has been dead and if it's been dead too long well the a module inside or inside the fungus even though this is hard the inside will be rotten so if you don't want to harvest for nothing harvest on trees that are live so what you want to look for is hardness and you see them I know how I could describe this I'll find some others to show you better but the top looks like what's coming to mind here is like you know waves that stopped in time it's very hard

I'll find some better ones to show you well just show you these here you know they come in different shapes and forms and different lighter colors let me find some others I'll be right back all right guys I know this has nothing to do with the fungus but I just fell upon this and I thought I would share this with you now if you look at the mark of this tree it looks a lot you know like a pine tree it looks also a lot like the large or Tamarack but actually this tree is a hemlock tree not the distinguish is different hemlocks have me show you a second very very small needles they're not very big very flat alright and if you're afraid to be get mixed up with the balsam fir well here you go there's your balsam fir right here right look at the size of this compared to the balsam fir wait see this there you got your hemlock balsam Kirk now the hemlock in French it's foolish the hemlock is was mainly used back in the time to you know build log cabins and such now it's not used much mostly pine and spruce but also this this tree contains I don't know how they processed it but sometime some type of acid and they'd use that acid for tanning so I thought I'd add this to the video okay I found some more I want to show you different sizes and shapes but again it's the same even though it's lighter here still your horses who fungus still this fungus again this is a yellow birch I'll show you different ones the bigger one there now I'll show you another distinct factor about this fungus give me a second here the shell is hard notice the colors and the waves right under second okay this second under you will find a smooth kind of sticky texture it's not sticky but it's smooth I don't know it's hard to explain but that's another distinct factor of this fungus now this texture texture behind under here can be in different colors this one is a light brown you can find it white you can find it also very very dark brown so that's another factor of this fungus okay here's a different it's state is still the horse hoof fungus okay but this is a different texture again this texture is smooth and kind of sticky a bit actually so you can find it white as well see the top is the same design with those waves I just wanted to show you this okay here you have your white spruce

the whole bunch on this one different shapes and sizes well you always look for that wavy and you know the texture under just show you a little bit more here did I say white spruce sorry white birch there's another one here some going all the way up now obviously you see different sizes and you want to pick up know the larger pieces because you know the bigger the piece the more Avenue you're going to find it one last thing just in case the question is asked is there anything poisonous about this absolutely not just taking your short break let me show you a little bit of my surroundings

so I found was looking for guys I'm going to make a you know just for the demonstration I'm gonna make just a small batch for you guys to show you so I've got two pieces there and I will be harvesting and I'll show you the easiest way to get to it okay now I'm on sippy rocks here so I may fall with you guys can have a laugh at snap-ins

now

obviously the bottom is flat the top goes in like a clean shape I'm just going to show you guys what it looks like first what I'm harvesting here

see how obvious this is the wave-like pattern

hard-shell the color the texture smooth I'll be harvesting these two now there are fair sized so I'll be able to do something with this let me put the camera back let me just put a little bit more over here

all right when there's smaller like this bottom part

where you want to hit hey you're going to hit upwards like this this with one

now when they're a little bit harder you can use a stick or a rock to get under the harvest these are the two pieces I'll be bringing home and I'll show you how to get the Avenue and harder processing all right so now I got my two pieces of fungus here now I just cut smaller winning tooth to show you I'm going to show you where the a Madhu is now this piece was like this and I just cut it in two and you're going to see inside here you got fibers going up like this that's no good this is no good what you're looking for is this spongy right here you see this orange orange just kind of texture to spongy texture that's what you're looking for and right on top here is a little bit of the bark which would be at the top here right so there's three layers got the bark the a module here and you got the fibers there's no good for this the a Madhu is this part right here so now the next step which is the hardest of the work it is what I call skinning so what you want to do again notice how thin the bark is so you want to be careful when you do skinned it you want it you're going to have to take all of this top part here right to the bottom because there's Avenue right over here and skinned it so I'll just show you one little example here just go we want to be careful and just take just take up that little bark off yes it's a lot of work but it's worth it all right

you see took the bark what you're looking for is this orange stuff which is the a Madhu the spongy so you do that all around and once I'm done I'm going to show you next just just wait a minute I've got some smaller pieces here that already done before in the past this is the texture it is it's just like a sponge right now believe it or not this was not only just used for a fire it was even used because it's got like a felt like texture used for certain hats but anyway most importantly it's not just not used for fire this is a great natural wick as well if you can find yourself you're in a survival situation and you find yourself a dead animal you melt down that fat make a makeshift Bowl or you know make yourself some birch bark oil you just soak this right into the oil or fat and let just a little piece out here and light her up and you're going to have a lamp natural lamp this is good stuff so I'm going to continue working on this as soon as I'm done I'll show you the next step all right so now I've skinned the fungus taking off the top bark right now as you go down the lower you go down the thinner your Amadou is going to be right smokes Li you know around the top here where you'll find it now you'll get these pieces of wood still in between what I call the waves you can you know take them out quite easily you just cut under on top take those pieces of wood as much as you can off

all right though there's a little bit left it isn't not that bad so now what you want to do is you want to harvest the a module so I just go I take the fattest piece here and I'll just you know as if you're slicing something I don't maybe potatoes or whatever and just I just get them in small pieces like this okay you don't want to go too thick because you get to the fibers here and thinner it is well the better it's going to produce I mean easier is going to be able to process there's a thicker piece right here

so I'm going to keep on slicing this when I have all my pieces I'll get back to you guys remember you're looking for this right here when you get to here it's no good that's the fibers that you see remember the fibers in the back here look at the thickness the thicker is thicker at the top all right I'll finish this and get right back at you all right something else guys when when you get into smaller ones I don't take time sometimes to peel the whole thing I'll just peel one section and just chop it off and this comes off of it okay and all I need to do is take the bark off this way but I have to be honest with you guys I've seen better pieces that contain ammeter than this so you know it's best I get more than enough and take the biggest pieces that you can from it all right this is a nice chunk right here see this okay I'm pretty well done guys sorry eh I mean this this part of the processing I'm running out of time I didn't even use all of this one I just use a little bit at the top but this is what comes off what came off this piece here so it's a fairly nice batch right for one piece that's about the size of my hand now before processing this maybe you're asking the question can you use this without processing it yes it's usable but obviously it's not as effective as what I'm about to show you if you want to use it like this right away you're going to need to what we call fluff it up a bit so you just take the tip of your knife and just scrape it just like you do birch bark okay I won't fluff the whole thing there but just to give you an idea wait I'll just take it off you fluff it up as such hey you make yourself I don't what I call fluff ball anyway and this will take a spark but obviously to prepare it is much better now your next step now that this is done right you've got your a Madhu ready what you want to do is start yourself a fire now if possible because you're going to need the ashes if possible if you can use birch you know for ashes it'll be better

concerning the chemistry of what you're about to see you know being that this abbot who came from a birch tree it's got better chemistry and they'll be more effective to do the job other rashes of course it's going to work but not as best as the same family of tree now what we're going to do is boil this in water and ashes that's why you make yourself a fire wait till you get some nice ashes and I'll show you but later what to do but why do we do this now as you can see this is kind of rubbery right it's pretty hard and rubbery boiling and ashes and water what's going to do of course there's a a chemical reaction that happens with the acid and all that but what it does is that it softens this nicely so can catch a spark now having the ashes of a birch tree we know that this is just like a sponge as well so what it does the water with the ashes infiltrate this piece of a module so while it's buoyant boiling it just doesn't just do some kind of chemical reaction to soften it up but it fills us piece with ashes as well impregnates it with ashes and we know that ashes comes from birch charcoal so there's a tip wire birds or lights up easier so the next step after you've taken the Amma do make yourself a fire once you got the ashes I'll show you the next step what to do

all right next procedure remember your add module is ready you've burned some woods for some ashes now I've got this brand new gallon just for this video so what you want to do recipe that I use anyway is you want to put the amount of ashes that you put in your gallon or whatever you're using you want to put half water so it's half half right I know if you're gonna see it's a little bit dark now you can see a liquid here okay if there's if there's a little bit of charcoal left in there you know let it cool off take it out and you'll be fine now and one thing to keep in mind remember you are going to be boiling this for about an hour so put enough ashes enough water so it boils for an hour the next step that you want to do is take your Amadou and drop it in all of it see as soon as I'll show you right away the reaction it does look at the color it becomes now I know it's because it's wet but it's also going to look something like that once it's done so you just pour it in this makes it good now there's all kinds of procedures to do this you could not even boil you can leave this in there you know between seven twelve days and I would still do the trick chem chemical reaction will do the what has to be done but I don't want to have to wait that long so another way of doing it you just boil it for about an hour now what I do is I let it sit in the water for about an hour then I'm going to boil it for another hour now again keep in mind why do I let it sit in an hour an hour in the water before boiling it this is like a sponge so I want it to soak in there as much as I can right through remember there's water and ashes and I want to go straight through these pieces once that's done then I'll put it on the fire boil it so that reaction occurs so while I'm waiting for this the next step is I'm going to rebuild my fire make sure I have enough coals for this to boil for an hour

all right it's been an hour now we'll just take it off the fire let it cool down and once it's cool down I'll show you what it looks like right the water cooled off now just to give you a little hint this gallon here was about halfway full so that means there's a quarter of Ash's the quarter of water in here and there's just about about half an inch left of water in it okay I'll give you an idea now once it comes out the next process is to let it dry right it has to become dry now once it dries it's going to become hard and it's normal and just to help a little bit with the process I went a little bit ahead well show you because it's a sponge it's full of water so just to help with the process of drying I just you know make sure I put I take all the water out

I'll just let this dry and once it's done I'll show you what to do next it's a lot more softer now alright guys I wanted to show you guys this stage of the process the next step now I've done all these already once your pieces you think it's dry it feels dry what you're going to want to do is pound on it like I've done with the rest of these here okay cuz you think that it's not dry yet you think I mean that it's dry but it's not by pounding on them like that you make them dry easier at the same time it's part of the process now you can use a piece of wood right but if you've got an ax or a rock or anything it goes a little faster so I'm going to use my ax here and you don't want to hit too hard you don't want to busted and pieces just hit well you'll see I'm just letting the axe fall down now at the same time what I'm doing or what this process is doing it's separating the fibers that are inside and see the water coming out this thing felt like it was dry but it's not don't want to pound it too hard cuz you're going to bust it a million pieces at the same time your piece will be caught in the piece of wood here I just pounded gently

till ya know that it's pretty much separated fibers you can feel because look it becomes all just a little more this piece here will be done yeah so you want it to become all nice and you know can't find the word but you can see it anyway so now as you can see these pieces are still not quite ready they're still drying when they do dry they're going to become a lighter color like I got two pieces here the smaller pieces here this that's ready this piece here that's ready now I have to wait for the rest so it's not so bad for one and a half piece of a you know a fungus that I had there's quite a bit in here now what you do once you're done like this you want to put them in your hands and just gently roll it you want to break it up a little more once or dry and now it's really nice really nice and soft and pliable and nice and dry see this now this guy is ready it's gonna make a little all right sorry about that guys yeah camera battery gave up on me isn't that fun when you're just talking and talking all of a sudden you realize that you're talking to yourself because the camera just died huh rather be talking to you all right so get myself a dry piece

it's going to be a little awkward for me I'm a bit low so you can see it on the camera

okay

she doesn't take a big piece to get your tender going mean your bird's nest going so alright so that's it for this video again as soon as these get dry a good thing to do is you know to I can still feel that this is moist the thing to do is last thing to do is just roll them all good so it becomes all nice and fluffy you know to break the excess off and you're going to have you know some good natural tinder that we call false tinder fungus or Emma do there's another this piece is dry and ready to alright so I hope you enjoyed this thanks for watching this is Mike from bushcraft barks bye

one last thing I forgot to mention you know I wanted to make sure I say everything but I almost forgot when you have a beat when your pieces are dry you just open them up because you're going to have to and you want this part right there in the middle that's the nice fluffy see it that's what's going to catch a spark if you leave them haven't done this one yet if you leave them flat like this you're gonna have a harder time so you just open them up I got done this one here and you're all set

this is good stuff right there okay I think I didn't forget anything anyway I think I got everything pretty much covered so I'm going to finish doing these and add that to my pack fire kit take care guys bye hello everyone

general rule is the bigger the fungus the less Avenue you will find per piece right the smaller it is the more the more Amity you'll find in it when you take two pieces together right per size also the bigger the piece the less quality or a Madhu is going to be I've also noticed that when you do skin it if you have not done this before you're going to notice that it's very hard to do it's like a nutshell all right but obviously the younger the piece a smaller piece the more tender the skin is going to be so that's just a few tips guys for you know to help you out a couple weeks after this video after I made this video I was thinking in my head because as you've seen this process is pretty long and you know it's a lot of hard work and time time-consuming so I was thinking in my head there's got to be another way to be able to process now to harvest it it's the same we have no choice you have to go through that but the processing I thought there's going to be another way that we can do this a simple way so that we don't don't have to spend so much time doing it and also a way that it would be as effective so an idea popped in my head I tried it out I put on video was my first time I try it and it actually worked very good this way takes about I'd say maybe five minutes to do and the effectiveness the effectiveness excuse me I'd say is as good maybe maybe even better so that'll be for you to judge so that's the next little clip that you're going to see right now alright guys I'm just experimenting here turning the amma do you know from the horseshoe fungus something popped in my head and i said there's got to be an easier way to process the amma do without having to boil so long and you know something that would be more effective if you're stuck out there in the bush and we'll see if it works i'm planning to try and char it to see if it will catch a spark a lot more easily than when it's fresh and you know charnot is a lot more easier than the process that you've seen in one of my videos on how to process it so these are two fresh pieces of i'ma do false tender faint fungus re there have not been processed so what we're going to do throw in here and we're going to char it or try and tart anyway just gonna wait to let Prime's up now if this works guys we're going to save ourselves a whole lot of trouble she's getting there there she goes so she's starting to smoke you can see it kind of windy so we'll wait for it to start I know you can't probably see it in that show you there smoke coming okay so we'll wait for that to stop smoking and I'll keep you updated stay tuned all right back hey let's see what it looks like now usually when you char cotton you know you wait for the smoke you see some smoke coming out and you wait for it to stop smoking and that's the sign that your char cloth is ready you know with cotton my experience with this it didn't smoke that much I left it maybe two three minutes and I took it off so I don't know what it's going to look like it's looking good so far this piece here broken - this was a full piece all right now the test I'm anxious to see I mean logically speaking this should catch fairly easy see that excellent a smokeless charcoal off or charcoal oh that this is burning nice awesome great now the only thing that I see is that it's a little bit a little bit brittle you know it just feels like it feels like char cloth actually but it works great it's just excellent 100 times better than that other process I'm going to tell you that so this is my first try and now with my second try that I'm going to try out I won't let it char too long guys with a Madhu if I take the fresh piece of a Madhu and I and they put a stronger and open flame to it like a lighter let's say it's good I mean I'm going to start and it's going to go so all you need to do is just actually to char the top of it and if you char the top of it I mean that's all you're going to need for a spark to get to it and the whole thing is going to you know light up for it at the same time it won't be as brittle see that beautiful thing nice coal nice ember burns a long time so that first process for me guys is out of my book this is a lot faster a lot simpler for the flint and steel so two things we know guys that you can count on in the bush for the flint and steel method two natural ways that are very effective to be able to charge stuff is the cattail fluff and the ammidon great amazing

that thing is birding nice just like a coal from wood I could probably start a fire from my deck here well it's not my deck I wouldn't do that on my deck okay guys well that's a fruitful experiment and that's what I'll be using from now on thanks for watching this is Mike from bushcraft barns by