Bushcraft Fire Lighting: Cramp Ball Fungi

Description

Learn how to use Cramp Balls (daldinia concentrica) an effective tinder fungus that works strait off the tree, when picked at the right time.

Become a Patron:

https://www.patreon.com/MCQBushcraft

Bushcraft Basics Blog - http://www.mcqbushcraft.co.uk/bushcraft-basics/

Amazon Store:

UK Store - http://astore.amazon.co.uk/mcqbushcraft-21

US Store - http://astore.amazon.com/mcq-20

Merchandise:

T-Shirts - http://mcqbushcraft.spreadshirt.co.uk/

Connect On My Website - http://www.MCQBushcraft.co.uk

Connect On Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/MCQBushcraft

Connect On Instagram - http://www.instagram.com/mcqbushcraft1

Connect On Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/MCQBushcraft

Tags: woodland,forest,mountains,river,lake,tinder,Survival,Bushcraft,survivor,knife,knives,valley,axe,camping,tent,footwear,hunting,fishing,backpack,clothing,boots,primitive,nature,shelter,shooting,shotgun,rifle,rucksack,flashlight,torch,craft,plants,trees,education,wilderness,family,hobbies,fun,animals,game

Video Transcription

hi guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and I've been out on a walk today I'm just in a woodland that I know pretty well and I've traveled here today just to have a look around it's um you know coming really to the end of autumn and we're coming into winter now and things are changing and it's always good to get out there and expose yourself to different seasons and in this video I really just wanted to show you a resource that was around at this time of year but a particularly good point in time to pick it and it scramble funghi dulled eniac and Centrica now which is a very interesting funghi that grows predominantly on dying ash trees and there's plenty of ash around me here as you can see lots of dead branches have fallen everywhere and on those branches we have the fungus that we've just mentioned trampled fungi and when you find crumpled funking you generally don't just find one or two although you can do in certain areas but most of the time in a woodland environment like this you find it in enormous colonies where it would have colonized large areas especially when there's a lot of ash within close proximity I think there's a bit of confusion on as to how effective cramp balls are as a tinder and one of the main stories I hear is people picking them they take them home and then a few days later the fungus spores everywhere and that's because the fungus has have been picked too early you need to let the fungus finish spawning which it will do you know coming into autumn you'll start to see them spore every everywhere and when they finish spawning they mature into a hard fruit body and at that point they are ready to pick and you can pick them then with no preparations required at all they don't need drying a provided they're not wet and you can just use them straight off the tree and they won't spawn because they finish that cycle it being an annual fungus it emerges around about this time of year and it goes all the way through to autumn next year where I'll complete its cycle and then turn into a hard crispy shell which we can remain on the tree for up to two years and generally insects use them as little home

but let's have a look at a few and we'll pick one straight off the tree and see if we can get it lit so here we go lots of dad's fool here nothing looks too dangerous above me so I'm not so you can you know they're concerned about standing here you can see that we've got lots of branches really big ones another reason why I'm never too comfortable under ash I'm camping especially a tree this big and old as well we've got lots of brackets all over this tree some I can see are just ready to use immediately this one here probably not yeah

nice and squidgy full of moisture but then the shell was cracked and the moisture has got in but this one underneath here you know this one feels fairly dry and that one might be pretty good but we'll have a look at a few different types in terms of what stage in their life they're in we're only gonna really see two types at this time of year which is new fruits that are pretty much brand new in the old ones that have finished maturing but there are a few just down here that look pretty good so you can see we have some crumble fungus here and we've got this stuff here that looks very hard Norma's has a powder coating that you can wipe off looks almost like a little chocolate that you get in a chocolate box and it's very very hard it's full of moisture feels rock-hard

you know if you start banging it you can see it starts to damage it slightly but you get the impression it's a very very hard fungi and this one here it's falling apart almost feels crispy like a dry sponge and says this one here or this one's got a lot of damage to the outer shell so the moisture has got in and has started to destroy the inside of the bracket and this one here feels a bit tougher the outer shell is intact no insects have burrowed in yet much like this one's been burrowed into you can see a little wood lice there poking out he's using it as a bit of a hidey hole and yeah you can see the difference is between the bracket here so this stage in their life they're really easy to tell apart this is a new fruit that will continue on till next autumn spore and then it will end up like this which has already been through that

and already spawned and if this one was in a better condition like this one is this would be ready to use as a tinder the difficulty occurs when you get partway through next year and this one can look a little bit like that but it'll still have a bit of brainless to it and you really want to use the knuckle test as just that something I'm really made up but it does work and it's when you tap that and feel it like that it feels and sounds like a dry sponge when you tap that and put your fingers over it it feels rock-hard you know like a hard piece of glue or something there's just no hollowness to it at all you can just tell that feels like a dry sponge so if we pick that and we crack it open you can see that's actually not in bad condition and I'll just leave that there

take my Ferro don't don't just pop there and we'll just see if we can get this one lit now I always prop them up somewhere so they're held in place because they can be a bit tricky so that will do and I'll just pop the fire rod here you can see there we put a few sparks in it took just a bite but use of the damp weather sometimes they need a little bit more encouragement so if it doesn't go straight away just persist with it you can see there that one started to go you can see that they take a bit of persuasion in damp conditions well that's no reason not to press on with it just blasted a bit more so it is really important to keep the air on with a cramp ball in its initial stages when it's really dumped in the summer when it's really dry and you've got a fruit body like this that's quite old you don't need to do this but got to keep that air on at the beginning or else

you can see they twin delight very quickly if not so you can see that wasn't too difficult we just picked that little crumpled there put some sparks into him with the ferrocerium rod and it was going quite successfully provided you kept some good air on for the initial part of igniting the tinder because when the weather's very damped like this and the airs damp and you know the crumble has a bit of dampness in it you do need to keep that pressure on especially at this time of year whereas it will go out very fast I usually walk with them like this and that way it just keeps that air circulation going on them for a while and at this time of year when it's damp if I'm using you know an ember to blow into flame like cleavers for example there's my nest that would be under my jacket drying on my way here and you know everything would be it would take that little bit you no longer really in weather conditions like this when you're using methods like that if you're using birch bark and fat wood and damp conditions like this then those are great tenders to match the weather conditions it's really all just about matching the process of making that fire with the kind of environmental conditions you're enduring but we have them another fall in ash tree here you even got a Canada bracket on there Ganoderma Rathlin artem growing there that is also useful you know a good ember but it needs a lot of processing and like the cram for loads of crumples absolutely loads of cramp balls growing all over this piece of ash and more than one of these is gonna be absolutely fine to use as tinder and because all of them have finished spawning and they finished that cycle I could pull all of these in my backpack and leave them there for ages provided they were dry and they're not gonna spoil they will rot if you don't dry them so if you're gonna pick them and they are dad and you're not picking a live one that will spore you can just put them on your mantelpiece at home or by a fireplace or on a heater or just somewhere warm and they'll dry within a day and they'll be ready to go and you can put them in your tinder bag and yeah use the most in demand you're out but let's have a look at a few more see if we can get a couple more going and yeah it goes and see there's an awful lot of crumples down here we even got another Ganoderma LaNasa growing just there as well and you can tell all of these are really mature this one here looks pretty good well I tend to do is just take my knife and scrape the top and just see how dry it is just got obviously watch yourself you don't put too much pressure because it can be quite hard you don't want to want to stab yourself so that one there looks pretty dry we'll put that on down here and have a look at a few more that one's soaked through sick three you can tell I just explode and they're saying what obviously well no it looks pretty good though yeah well it's not bad you can see it's quite hard I had a really good intact shell so you can see that one there's in a pretty good state so we've got two just here and they're fairly dry they're gonna there's gonna be some moisture in there we can't really avoid that given the weather conditions but they're pretty good we'll see if we can get these going so you can see they had to put quite a bit of air on this because in the beginning stages as I say when it's damp they're really fragile have very very you know they're just going very easily so guys I hope that video helped on using crambles there are really easy tinder to use finding them may be a different story and when you do you generally find huge colonies of them and you can sort of bookmark that area and you'll know that they'll always be there provided they don't come along and take all the ash away in DeForest the place but yeah I mean there are really easy to do to use so it's just about picking them in the right stage of their life that's it and these fruit bodies we've been playing around with today you know the the dry crispy ones or the ones that are full of water they'll still hang around on the tree all the way through next year

and maybe even the year after if they fare well and the new fruit bodies you'll see you just don't want to get those mixed up with them so just use the tap test and just check if they're brittle and they feel and sound like a hollow sort of hard sponge but they sign to dance just leave them alone and move on and I'm sure you're fine ones seen enough but it's really not about technique is just about picking the fungi at the right point in its life but just something to look out for at this time of year so I hope that's helped and I appreciate you watching and I'll see you very soon hopefully in another video so take care and have fun