Fat Wood

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elkhound

elkhound

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call it fat wood,lighter wood,lighter knots,pitch stobs and vast other names depending on location you live. but its basically resin soaked evergreen chunks of wood. its natures gasoline/kerosene/diesel fuel i have started 1000's of fires in cascade mtns on rain with pitch stobs. be warned dont toss a large hunk on a fire...you will stand back and it will be a large fire.guy i worked for part of crew was complaining about it being cold,raining and spitting snow on lunch break. he tossed one on fire that was already going and it wasnt long till it was a roaring fire.they like to never put it out to go back to work...lol...a little goes a long way.

 
one other thing to help in fire starting that many dont talk about is the use of a candle. just light then candle and you have that steady source right there to go back and forth with getting pieces lit if you dont have a starter from the wilds or a homemade starter etc. makes getting your bundle relit if need be.a candle can get lots of fire going just snuff it out after you are done and its ready for next time you need a fire.
 
If you can't find Fat Wood locally in the wild, check your hardware or wood stove stores. I bought a bundle of Fat Wood sticks for under $10 and it'll last me a super long time.

I have a small tin of fat wood shavings in my primary fire kit.

In the past, I've also taken match sized pieces, used duct/gaffer/Gorilla tape to tape 2 or 3 to strike anywhere matches to make one match fire-starters too.
 
one thing to is to go to a pine/fir etc and get any resin leaking out and roll into a ball then get a little match sized stick and impale it on it.then you can light it with a bic and use it to light various spots in fire bundle and/or then stick it in ground and to help sustain fire to get it going faster and easier.

one thing i noticed over the years many people get small bundle fires going but when tasked to keep it going and to get a much larger warming fire going they have failed.
 
I mentioned this before but I find it cool so it's worth another mention. When I visited the Museum of the Appalachia, there was a flat stone. Maybe a couple foot square. On the top of this stone there is a peace sign pecked into it. The grooves maybe a half inch deep. The peace sign has a coupe extra angles in it and a long groove went to the edge.

This stone was used to make pine tar. A metal bucket was filled with fat wood and turned upside down over the peace sign. Then a fire was burned on top of it and the pine tar would run down into the grooves and run out the long groove into a container.

it looked like a great idea, whether or not it worked well, I don't know.
 
Since we start a new fire every day, I am kind of lazy when it comes to starting the fire in our fireplace on a cold morning,

We purchase manufactured firestarters. If you find them on sale they are about 7¢ a piece. One square can start a firebox of full-size split oak without any small sticks, kindling, or paper. Not bad for 7¢ and less messy. A whole lot easier and faster than hunting fat wood and kindling. One box will start 144 fires. Not sure how much space I would need to store enough kindling and fatwood to start 144 fires.

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elkhound, others, if you make the lint and wax fire starters, how long do you put them in the freezer? Not days, at least 6 hours? Then store in a cool place.
I've saved some lint and egg cartons as shown, for fire starter, didn't realize using wax would be a thing.
 
i have no idea.i call bullcrap on the freezer. that wax be cool and setting up hard pretty fast. i have not ever done what he has done. i use dryer lint by itself to start my fire in my woodstove. we humans can over complicate things too. i have no doubt you can just shave off a chunk of wax and use it to get a fire going good. or fine shavings off a block wax to catch a spark from a ferro rod.

i have started so many fires i just dont even think about it to be honest.i have used things people dont like as well. like plain pine cones.i know some dip pine cones in wax for their starters.
 
Back in my scouting days, we made the egg carton/lint/wax fire starters before campouts, Jamboree's, Summer Camp, etc... We even had a special pan dedicated to melting the wax with a pour spout crimped in the aluminum side. (Dad was our Scout Master)
We never used the freezer or fridge. They just set up naturally.

These days, I also make fire starter wafers with 100% cotton makeup remover rounds.
In one dedicated pan, I heat petroleum jelly to liquid. Using forceps, I dip the rounds in the liquid jelly then set on wax paper to set up (usually a few hours to overnight).

Then I melt wax in a dedicated pan and dip the jelly soaked pads to seal them and set them out to set up on another sheet of wax paper. After the wax hardens, I put about 5 or 6 in 2" round screw top tins I have.

When I need them, I bend them in half and slightly tear them open to expose the cotton fibers. One hit from a match, lighter, or even a ferro rod and they burn for about 5 minutes.
 
Patchouli said:
Thanks for info. I've got pinecones too.
Sparky, were these fresh, clean, never been used makeup remover rounds or are you recycling your woman's cast offs?

:camping: I need to go camping.
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Fresh, unused is what I use, mainly because the Mrs. rarely wears makeup so I don't need to worry about "recycling".
Don't see why recycling used ones wouldn't work, though. Even makeup will burn, lol.


Patchouli said:
Where do you buy the wax?
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Dollar store candles for cheap (preferably unscented), or craft store candle making bulk wax.
Not sure my urban area has a canning store... :confused:
 
I've got one son in the military and he and another son are both Eagle scouts. You would think they would have taught their mom how to go camping! I think I used to know but even with all my yacking about going camping, I still haven't gone!
I've never heard of fat wood and I do miss being out in the woods.
 
Patchouli said:
I've got one son in the military and he and another son are both Eagle scouts. You would think they would have taught their mom how to go camping! I think I used to know but even with all my yacking about going camping, I still haven't gone!
I've never heard of fat wood and I do miss being out in the woods.
Click to expand...
Hey, I was an Eagle Scout and I never heard of fatwood. Of course, I've lived all my life in Minnesota. In Minnesota, there are really no pine trees that result in good fatwood. Most of the fatwood pine species are found in the southern USA. It's no wonder why this yankee has never heard of fatwood. Of course, we have birch bark that will light and burn even when wet.
 
We typically pack chaga for our fire starter. We harvest our own chaga for tea. Once the chunks of chaga have been depleted of its tea making properties, we use it as a fire starter. It will start to smolder with just a spark. Blow on it a few times and then start your fire. Quick, simple, effective. The native Athabaskans would use it to transport fire between campsites as the chaga will hold an ember for hours.
 
Cabin Fever said:
Hey, I was an Eagle Scout and I never heard of fatwood. Of course, I've lived all my life in Minnesota. In Minnesota, there are really no pine trees that result in good fatwood. Most of the fatwood pine species are found in the southern USA. It's no wonder why this yankee has never heard of fatwood. Of course, we have birch bark that will light and burn even when wet.
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any pine/evergreen/fir can result in lighter knots.pitch stobs,fat wood etc. sometimes you just have to beat the rotten wood off the outside to find the resin core. i have cut off the intersection joints of limbs and trunks as well.

just another tool of knowledge for daily survival if you need it.
 
Down here in the south fatwood stumps are common, 200 to 300lbs. I got one stump down in the bottoms it'd take a dozer to get out, at least 800lbs.

As Elkhound said almost any pine will produce knots or chunks of fatwood. Here in the south "true fatwood" comes from longleaf pine aka Pinus palustris. It’s a very slow growing pine and can reach ages of 400+ years. It produces entire stumps and logs of fatwood.

When out in the woods and need fire I'm never more than a few hundred yards from fatwood. Oh, down here it's known as "Lighter Pine" as in lighting fires.


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Someone above mentioned keeping lighter pine shavings in a fire kit. I do also, Nothing but lighter pine shavings, a magnesium fire starter and some cotton lint. I can start a good fire in a rain storm with it , I've tested it.

Also, above, the first pic with the bee hive in it... My family has been starting fires with that pile of fatwood for the past 50years. At least 100 years of wood left.
 
I went hiking in the Cascades years ago, probably not that far east of Seattle, was with a friend and his wife and two kids, they were complaining all the time and actually had the right to as it was raining. I don't remember where I found the pitch glob, might have been an old stump but anyway I got a good fire going, just with wood scraps and old fallen branches, old rotted stumps are good because they can be broken apart by hand, evergreen stumps always have a lot of pitch in them and the bark also burns good. Because of pine beetles boring into the bull pines around here the trees pump out pitch to protect themselves, that pitch is abundant but the wood of bull pines hardly burns at all, other than the branches that contain a lot of pitch naturally.
 
Alaskajohn said:
We typically pack chaga for our fire starter. We harvest our own chaga for tea. Once the chunks of chaga have been depleted of its tea making properties, we use it as a fire starter. It will start to smolder with just a spark. Blow on it a few times and then start your fire. Quick, simple, effective. The native Athabaskans would use it to transport fire between campsites as the chaga will hold an ember for hours.
Click to expand...
What was used in our area by the Native Americans to move fire from one campsite to the next were the Hoof Polypore also know as Tinder Conk. They grow on mostly on dead or dying birch trees in our area. The fiber of the fungi can be easily started with magnesium sparks.

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