Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) is a fairly common tree in Kent and we have a couple of sizable compartments of it in our woodlands, in fact a couple of years ago we coppiced about an acre of it over the winter.
It was introduced by the Romans as a food source but there are other bushcraft uses for sweet chestnut.
I frequently use the inner bark as a tinder, where I find it works particularly well as a tinder bundle. We also make good use of the inner bark of sweet chestnut to make various bark containers, sometimes folded containers, sometimes woven bark containers.
So take a look at this short video where I talk about some of the bushcraft uses for sweet chestnut.
We teach natural tinders on our 2 Day & 5 Day Bushcraft Courses, the IOL Bushcraft Competency Course and also our 2 Day & 5 Day Survival Courses. You can see plenty of photos from all of these courses on our Facebook page.
