If you are in an emergency or survival situation without matches or a lighter, starting a fire can be very difficult. The most difficult part of starting a fire is initially lighting the tinder material. This is because you usually don’t have the ideal tinder material available to get things going.
One of the best things to help with this is to make and carry some char cloth. Char cloth is a cotton fabric that has been heated to over 400c without oxygen, the absence of oxygen causes the fabric to char instead of burning. Char cloth is extremely sensitive to heat and it catches fire and smoulders very, very easily.
The video below shows how to make char cloth in an Altoid tin. My recommendation – find an old Altoid (or similar tin), follow the instructions in the video below and make a good batch of char cloth. Store it in the Altoid tin (when cooled) and throw it in your survival or bug-out bag. Not only is the tin great for storing the char cloth, but it can also be reused to make some more when required.
