The article explains what tinder is, provides a test word for it, and explains what it is used for and what types it comes in.
Fire
Fire has been a relentless companion of man for many millennia. In ancient times, it gave people the opportunity to keep warm in the cold winter, protect themselves from wild animals, prepare soft food that the elderly and children could eat, send a distress signal and, in the end, light up the room.
It is difficult to say exactly when our ancestors first began to use fire and produce it on their own and how many situations there were when this knowledge and skill was lost. If we talk about the method that then existed for many centuries, then probably its origin is as follows: when processing stone tools, someone noticed sparks flying off the workpiece and decided to try to make a fire with their help, and not by rubbing wood against wood, which is an unusually long and laborious process.
Later, this method was changed, and instead of one of the stones, people began to use a strip of iron with notches, and the ignition material was replaced by a special pre-prepared tinder. That is how the flame was born. But what is tinder, how it happens and how it ismake? We'll talk about that.
Definition
Tinder is a material that is used to make fire with a flint and flint. As a rule, it ignites very easily or begins to smolder even from minor sparks. Rags, fluffy cotton wool, dried fir cones, paper rubbed with wax or impregnated with vapors of combustible substances, and much more can act as tinder. But if we disassemble the meaning of the word "tinder", then its name comes from the tinder fungus, which grows in almost the entire territory of Russia and part of Europe and has been used since ancient times as a material for making fire. Over time, the word "tinder" has become a household word and is used to refer to any substances that are used in conjunction with a steel.
Now let's look at the process of making tinder from a fungus and some other materials.
Production
The second most popular material for making tinder was burnt cotton fabric. To give the desired properties, it was “baked” in the fire, placed in a fire-resistant container, for example, in a clay bowl or a tin can. After that, such tinder ignited very easily from even imperceptible sparks. So now we know what tinder is.
But still, initially and historically, tinder was made from a tinder fungus. To do this, it is necessary to cut its spongy, porous part into thin slices. Then they were mixed with wood ash, filled with water and boiled over low heat for several hours. After boiling, the broth itself was drained, and the resulting substance was kneaded, beaten to a pancake-like state and dried. After all these procedures, such tinder could be easily set on fire with the help of sparks, and then fan the smoldering flame and set fire to any other material. Now we know exactly what the word "tinder" means.
Flint and Steel
As already mentioned, various materials of natural origin could act as tinder, but since making fire with a flint and steel required skill, our ancestors preferred to prepare tinder in advance and from materials that ignited most simply and easily. After all, sometimes it was necessary to make a fire under a strong wind or in damp weather. We figured out what tinder is, now let's look at the details of the steel itself.
- Kresalo. Usually it is a strip of durable metal, the surface of which is covered with small notches in the manner of a file. This was done to facilitate the process of extraction of sparks. When it hits the surface of the “flint”, the smallest particles break off from the latter, which ignite in air and have a temperature of about 900-1000 degrees Celsius. And, falling on tinder, these particles cause it to ignite or smolder.
- Flint. Since ancient times, a piece of iron sulfide, pyrite, has been used as this object. It was selected taking into account the convenience of holding, the absence of cracks (pyrite is very fragile) and the absence of large pores, since because of them it will constantly get wet. It is not known exactly when our ancestors becameuse iron sulfide. According to one version, the miners of the early Middle Ages noticed that as a result of hitting this mineral with a pick, a significant amount of bright and hot sparks were formed, and this property of pyrite was then used in the mechanism for producing fire.
- Tinder. What is it, we have already sorted it out. But in the absence of a pre-prepared special combustible material, dry grass, wool, cotton wool, moss, bird fluff and anything that could ignite from sparks could be used as such.
Tinder. Security word
If we talk about etymology, then in this case the test word is “tinder fungus” or “tinder fungus” - a type of fungus from which this combustible material for flint was historically made.
Modern tinderbox
Despite the fact that in our time the extraction of fire has long ceased to be a problem, hunters, tourists, fishermen and residents of especially remote taiga villages still continue to use the steel. But the armchair and "flint" of a modern fire starter are made of special metal alloys, which give whole sheaves of hot sparks, and even large birch bark can be set on fire with them without difficulty.
