Bushcraft Stuff

So what’s Amadou? 

Well it’s not the title of an Olivia Newton John song from way back.

Amadou is a fantastic natural tinder. It’s made from the Horse’s Hoof Fungus, which has a fine, velvety layer resembling suede leather. This suede-like layer is sandwiched between a tough nut-like, outer layer, called the Cuticle and the pores, which are thousands of tiny tubes all packed together. The Horse’s Hoof Fungus is mainly found on dead trees such as the Birch and Beech, and it resembles a horse’s hoof – hence its common name.

Amadou is very hard to source, and even more difficult to make well.  
Amadou was used by our ancestors because it makes excellent tinder that is able to catch even the vaguest of sparks, it is probably one of the best tinders that can be found in nature. It has a beautiful velvet feel and is as resilient as suede leather and can be stored indefinitely. Amadou has been used for fire-making for thousands of years, and would have been found in virtually every travellers tinder box because of its great reliability.

The ember that is created from the smouldering Amadou is very hot, which makes it an outstanding tinder for traditional fire making techniques such as flint and steel
If you try Amadou with any modern fire lighting tools such as ferro rods you will see that it is virtually impossible for you not to catch a spark that instantly creates an amazingly hot ember.

Once your Amadou has caught a spark, it will begin to glow and gently smoke. This newly formed ember is very hard to extinguish since it burns incredibly hot. Any wind or breeze that blows on it will cause it to get even hotter!

Once the ember has become established, you have more than ample time to place the Amadou ember into the centre of a previously prepared tinder bundle – and then blown into a flame. Whilst Amado burns very hot it burns at a steady and slow pace; a small piece, about the size of your thumb nail will burn for a good minute or so.

In a future article we will look at how to harvest horse’s hoof fungus and how to process it into amadou.

**if there are any points you would like to raise or any information you would like to add regarding this article, please feel free to use the Comments box below**

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