"I would like to keep up with this page. If you have additional natural accelerant ideas, but are not a Writer yet, please PM me and I will add it to the page. Writers, of course, should just add their examples into the image table."

"The outer layers of birch bark peel off easily. It remains pliant for some time. So it can be used as a paper, but it is not durable as what we enjoy as paper, nor even what ancient Egyptians enjoyed as paper. Even so, it has been used by many cultures for extended periods of time.

Birch bark is full of a resinous oil which I believe is called <B>Betulin. </B>Betulin has qualities which are believed to be medicinal. The oil in the bark is highly flammable. Liquid accelerants, such as gasoline, have their greatest effect when atomized. Atomized liquid accelerants have huge surface areas exposed to oxygen which makes them explosive. When not atomized they are much less likely to be a problem. Since the oil in birch bark is in the solids of the bark, it is not all exposed to oxygen. The woody part of the bark takes some of the latent energy. Heating the bark of course gassifies the oil which is why I have it listed as an accelerant.

For fire starting, I feel birch bark to be more effective than gasoline because of the slower burn rate. For this reason it is safer to use. Gasoline will produce a large amount of heat very quickly, but is spent in short order.<B>
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Seriously has no-one else noticed the more people the are 'helping' to start a fire the longer it takes?
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