Bushcraft Fire Lighting: Leather Tinder Pouch

Description

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Video Transcription

hi there guys I was expecting bad weather today but looks like the clouds have broken for a while and the sun shining through which is always really nice it doesn't save everything from being absolutely soaked though at this time of year which air which it all is but I thought I'd do a video today on this particular item here this is a leather tinder pouch and an item I always carry with me very multifunctional item you can use it for lots of different things which we'll have a look at later but I keep all sorts of Tinder's in here things that I normally carry around and I use on rainy days where I may not want to sort of venture out and have a look around and find resources and I just want something there and then that I can use to get a fire going very quickly so it was good to carry something around with you just in case the weather is really bad and the conditions do get quite quite miserable it does save you some some effort and obviously lifts morale a bit when you can get a fire going straight out of a fire back but I thought I'd do a video today just showing how you can make one of these this is just a leather pouch they're really useful items to have in your pack you can use them for all kinds of different things as we'll have a look out later but first of all before I go into how you can build one I'm going to take advantage of this birch tree here it's been falling for some time and the bark is started to separate from the wood layer underneath so it's perfect really to strip nice big sheets of birch bark off and I can keep those in my tinder page because it's probably one of the best hinders that I get along with due to the wet conditions so making one of these punctures is really easy I'll just empty mine 8 then we'll have a look at how it's made now that is completely empty you can see it's really really basic and it's designed very very simple to make it's just a circle of leather with holes punched all around the edge a piece of leather called threaded through and I've just made a bone toggle to go on the end if you want to make one this size you can really make out of any material you like you could make out of synthetic material it's got more water resistance to it you can make it have some hide you've prepared absolutely anything you like and the cord doesn't need to be leather cord it could be paracord if you really wanted it to or some string or or really anything some natural cordage you know it's just a simple leather pouch but if you want to make one this size I'll show you the measurements so when this package is drawn up I get about 6 to 7 inches of space inside it's probably about sort of three to four inches deep you know depending on how much I put in it so you can carry quite a bit of equipment in there and if you just overfill it you just find that the top is a little bit more open you can't sort of do it all the way up like that and seal it but if you're going to make one want to make something this size exactly this size and if you measure this side to this side here the diameter of this is 15 inches so you're going to want to sort of measure something up about 15 inches wide obviously in a circle or whichever shape you want you could probably make it into any shape you liked out of any kind of material if you're going with something this size it's 15 inches and what you're going to want to deal with the holes here is you're going to want to punch 48 holes one inch from each other I usually measure them one inch down and one inch apart all the way around and you can do it by eye if you really want to I mean I did this by eye it's not you know it's not sort of science in that respect so you just end up with some of it closer together

others but 48 holes all the way around the edge about an inch apart from each other and you'll end up with something quite nice like this and for the piece of cord I've used leather the leather is obviously a little bit smaller than the hull because leather on leather tends to sort of grate a bit and you won't be able to draw it up too nicely so you want to make sure the cords a lot smaller than the hole you're punching you can use anything to punch the hole you can even cut a square with your knife you know onto a piece of wood like that put the leather down cut a square cut a square it will take a long time but it's you know is a way of doing it I've made one that way and it's easy to do and we could use you know just the normal punch that they use for paper well you might not be able to get enough depth on it you can get leather punches though and belt punches things like that or even stamp punches that you hammer down to punch your hole with and you can get these off the internet pretty cheap if you just search on eBay or something like that and they are really useful actually for doing leather work with and but for the for the toggle but I have a piece of leather there a little leather toggle that just acts as a buffer to sort of protect the leather from stretching when I draw you know when I draw it up too tight I've just got a piece of antler there and I've drilled a hole through it and just threaded the leather through and then knotted it and the piece of cord really just measure it by I just thread it through and then see how much excess you've got and you know make it any length you want really you just want to make sure that there's enough cord there so when you fully open the pouch up you know you don't run out of cord and you can 88 sort of open it this far for example you want to really be able to open it up because then that gives you a few other uses for it which we'll have a look at now you're going to use a natural material like leather you want it to be slightly water repellant and obviously leather can be very absorbent so on this side here I usually have the suede side on the inside there have the outer of the leather just here I use some fat I carry a tin of fat round with me these somewhere blades and other kind of bits of metal and on the leather work you can rub that in and it just helps fight away the water when you're putting it down on damp surfaces I'm always kind of working in damp conditions especially at this time of year

everything is absolutely soaked so I'm just mindful that I want this kind of material to not absorb water and get all my tinder wet and although there are certain Tinder's it doesn't matter if you get them soaked you like birch bark you can pretty much dip it in water take it out scrape it into a dust pile tear it apart and light it with a fire steel and it'll be absolutely fine there are materials in there that I use for things like candle wicks and other kind of things like crambles and fungus and they will absorb water so waterproofing the page every now and then is a good idea and if you apply a bit of heat to it it really will suck up this kind of material would be very waterproof but this does serve a few other functions and there's a few things I use it for I've got a temp here and the top of the tump is very wet I'll just put some fat in here and it's nice and waterproof so what I could do is wrap this around the tump just like that and just draw it a bit tighter so what this gives you is a nice kind of dry surface to work on and if you waterproof the underside enough with with various oil or fat or any kind of material even wax would be a really good one

and melt down some wax and you absorb it into this you'll be quite rigid that would be very water resilient what you could use this for is a number of different things you've got a great work surface to do some work on well they've got to be careful that you don't cut the leather if you are using a knife you know you can even strop your blade on it just give yourself a bit of a strop you don't have a leather belt on you for example or any other material to strop on and then you could just strop your blade and clean a few tools up this is quite useful bit of material to carry around with you you can see if we take that off there no water's absorbed in still nice and dry the fat's done its job and you know you can rest easy that your tenders are going to be dry it's quite useful to carry around just a bit of leather on you mean I would probably opt for a leather belt as an ideal strop or something like that but I don't always carry around a leather belt on me I don't always wear a leather belt just because I find I've got a different type of belt I find a bit more modular a bit more comfortable for my kit but addy likes have a piece of leather on me because it is a very useful bit of material to have the fire lighting methods I use really change with the seasons you know at the moment things a really damp or either very frosty and thawing out when the Sun comes out so everything's soaked all the time so to sort of use tenders that behave like embers and blow into flame there's just no point in using that kind of method because the process is involved are just too long you know for what I'm doing on that day in a drawing materials out on your body you know and using those kind of embers as just you know can be fruitless and frustrating so for me you know just using things like birch bark you know and pine sap and and sort of resin type material that will ignite and produce an actual flame for me so I can ignite fire feathers or I can use dead standing wood is a far easier way throughout the winter for me to make fire if I want to make fire on that day so you know that the kind of materials I carry in the pranks really change all the time this changes with my mentality my mood or what I'm doing or what I want to experiment with but just to give you a rough overview of all the different things I use from time to time and what I experiment with I've got all these materials here that I've collected over quite long periods of time of going out and just finding them in their natural environment and then collecting sort of samples and playing around with them so these are generally all the materials I play around with a whole range of different things different methods like striking cold sparks on flint and steel or on the back of a knife got iron pyrite ease there in naturally-occurring iron and stain got fire piston don't carry around that really at all I mean as I say I don't carry around all this stuff I probably carry around some birch bark I've got some greater Reed Mason here which I carry around for the core of nests because it's really useful stuff do you carry around a bit of Ganoderma a MIDI and a bit of horse's hoof a MIDI and obviously this pine sap glue which is really useful stuff especially for making woodland matches is great but chaga fungus and sometimes a few cramp rules and the rest of it is really just for the through the day where I might decide to go out and practice fire making in all this glory I want to take loads of different stuff with me but you can see there you can make little pouches as well if you've got items like cramp balls that you know explode and leave black dust everywhere and you want to keep them in there just in case you're a bit heavy-handed you don't want it blowing up in the tinder page but another thing I carry an attender pouch is a bit of fat because that goes hand-in-hand with making candles and obviously maintaining equipment like the tinder page on knives and various other things but as far as fire making days in terms of a piece of ignition - well tool for ignition I just carry around a ferrocerium rod that's pretty much it the knife is obviously you know 1095 carbon steel so it takes sparks - if I really want it to so guys I hope this video has been useful on how to make one of these tinder patches and you can make them of any kind of material like as I'm sure you can take artistic license with it and make one the size of an entire pack if you really wanted to but they come in all shapes and sizes and they really are quite useful for storing things just a very simple way drawstring bag of putting various things in so I hope this has answered questions anyway on the Panchen how to make them and really what I keep in it and various things like that but if not just comment and I'll get back to you as soon as I can but also just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone all right though watches the videos and comments and likes and you know and watches them I really appreciate it and especially thank you to people have subscribed recently and you know welcome to the channel and I hope you like the videos there'll be plenty more to come in 2014 say hope everybody as well and as I say if you've got any questions just ask me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can

and take care