Tinder

Scale indicates a very highly flammable material that can be used as a means of ignition to ignite the fire.

In Grimm's dictionary it means, scale is " ... a loose, powdery mass from plant materials, which is brought through the spark at the stone beaten to smolder. Since ancient times this is scale- out of certain tree sponges, polyporus, see zundelschwamm, scale swam through cooking in lye, then made ​​from charred canvas. but even older, and still common in simple overpopulate, is for the use of queasy holze ... ".

For storage of the scale you are using a tinderbox or a corresponding box. There, a flint and a stone - ( pyrite ) or steel piece was often included to Firemaking next to the tinder.

Materials

• A long- commonly used and well-suited material for tinder is the dried "fruit body flesh" ( Plectenchym ) of the scale sponge ( also tinder fungus called ) Fomes fomentarius, a fungus from the order of Poriales in the class of Agaricomycetes. It grows mostly in dead wood and forms fruiting bodies outside of the timber. Particularly flammable tinder is obtained from the tinder fungus by soaking the sliced ​​" fruiting body flesh" with saltpeter (potassium nitrate), drying and tenderizing.
• Fabric scraps of linen or cotton were charred (pyrolysis ) and used as tinder. In English, the name of this kind of scale "char cloth" or " charred cloth", in German it is called canvas scale. This canvas scale was formerly used in most households, because it assumes spark very well and was easy to manufacture from plastic waste.
• Examples of ethnology, for example, scale of tinder fungus, which was found in men from Hauslabjoch "Ötzi", winged seeds of thistles in late summer or of dandelion, the outer birch bark, dry grated leaves, lichens, hay, spores of the club moss, mealy fibers decaying wood.