Fire sponge (fire agent)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fire set with fire sponge

The fire sponge (also tinder sponge or ignition sponge ) is a fawn, tomentose tinder made from the trama of some mushrooms. Up until the 20th century it was of great importance in domestic fire generation.

Manufacturing

Most often, fire sponges are made from the fungus Fomes fomentarius (the actual tinder sponge ). The species common fire sponge and oak tangled were also used. The common fire sponge Phellinus igniarius , which grows on willows, however, produces a low-quality tinder.

To make it, the hard mushroom is pushed from the tree. The trama is freed from the bark and the rest of the body and pounded soft. Then it is boiled in caustic solution. This is done in pits, which are filled in layer by layer with the mushroom and wood ash and then poured with hot water. It is fermented like this for three weeks. Then it is dried and patted soft again. The resulting fire sponge is yellow to brown. It is then colored black with black alder bark and iron water or blue wood broth and iron vitriol . So that it catches the spark better, it is often dipped in nitric or lead acetate solution or rubbed with black powder .

The French white fire sponge is bleached with chlorine and is more flammable when treated with potassium chlorate . Ulm and Strasbourg were known for high quality fire sponges.

history

The trama of some types of mushrooms was processed into tinder as early as the Neolithic . “ Ötzi ” carried a fire sponge from Fomes fomentarius dusted with pyrite in his belt pouch. Archaeologists found further specimens in the pile dwellings of Alvastra and in the Stone Age settlement near Ehrenstein .

Due to the high demand, the stock of tinder mushrooms fell, so that Germany imported them from Sweden, Hungary and Slavonia in the 19th century . At the beginning of the 20th century, the mushrooms in German forests were almost extinct and there were only a few people in Germany who practiced the profession of "Zundelmaker". However, due to better fire-making methods, demand had also fallen sharply.

The current population of tinder fungi is lower than in the past, as the parasitic fungus only affects old trees that have been weakened by disease.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Feuerschwamm in Herders Conversations-Lexikon at Zeno.org .
  2. ↑ a b fire sponge . In: Heinrich August Pierer , Julius Löbe (Hrsg.): Universal Lexicon of the Present and the Past . 4th edition. tape 6 . Altenburg 1858 ( zeno.org ).
  3. ↑ a b fire sponge . In: Brockhaus Bilder-Conversations-Lexikon . 1st edition. Volume 2, FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1837–1841, p.  33 .
  4. ↑ His belt pouch. (No longer available online.) In: Ötzi - the ice man. South Tyrol Museum of Archeology, archived from the original on June 30, 2016 ; accessed on June 30, 2016 .
  5. ^ Marie Andree-Eysn: The Zundelmacherei . In: Journal of the Association for Folklore . No. 25 , 1915, pp. 3–5 ( online [accessed July 8, 2016]).
  6. ↑ Fire sponge in the women's conversations dictionary at Zeno.org .