Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Fat Wood

Mossy;
Good afternoon to you sir, I hope you're keeping either out of the weather or warm enough as of late.

Yesterday's fun here was 4 hours on the little 4x4 diesel tractor plowing out our rural driveway along with a couple of the neighbor's and the rural mailbox. I know we needed some snowpack, but would have been okay if it would have stayed just a tad higher up.

Indeed I am not sure if it's the wind conditions or because we're dry here, though you all are no rain forest for sure either.

If you don't mind, what trees do you find it in down there?

We've logged Ponderosa in the yard over the years and that gets turned into firewood for the shop. For the house until a few years back when the brain trust in Ministry of Forests decided we couldn't use Western Larch for firewood - they said too many idiots were cutting live trees in winter, not sure - but that and Doug Fir are what most of the firewood was for the past 32 odd years.

A couple years back I started to bring down a load or two of Lodgepole as it lights up easier than the Doug Fir and when a stick or two is thrown in with a big nighttime block, it keeps it going a wee bit better.

If I've run into fat wood with a Ponderosa, I cannot recall doing so.

Also I've never found any in the Lodgepole wood.

Usually in the Doug Fir as mentioned it'll be near the base of the tree and not lots of it either, just a vein or two at most.

Thanks again for the post, it's fun to learn.

All the best.

Dwayne

I just use a propane torch with one of those piezo starter heads......

I largely gave up on matches a couple decades back when they changed the "strike anywhere" head formula, but not the name... Bic for the win out back-packing.

Lots of beetle-killed spruce around here right now. Birch bark is also excellent, even wet it will burn. More or less.

Propane weed burner works great in camp. Make a stack of logs, even wet, fire up the burner underneath and you get a roaring fire in a minute. It feels wrong, but so convenient

Also known as trading stock.

One of my shooting benches is made of pitch pine. Rot is terrified of that stuff.

"Lighter wood" here in eastern N.C. Some people call it "fat wood" in eastern N.C., but the majority of us call it "lighter wood".
"

LMAO!!

Lightered was all we ever called it. Heart pine, fat wood, pitch pine, it's all the same. It's the heart of an old pine tree where the rosin collected in the dead wood in the center. Today's pine trees are all harvested as sapwood but in the old days before we cut down all the old stuff it was mostly heart pine. My house was built in 1892 and is mostly heart pine (God I hope it doesn't ever catch fire). You can barely drive a nail into it, it's hard as woodpecker lips. A couple of old doors easily weigh twice what they would if they were made out of modern pine lumber. If you go into the attic it smells like the day it was cut, it's almost intoxicating how good it smells.

Red Pine is the best source of fatwood here in MI. The base of the dead lower branches is full of pitch. We found a bonanza in an old rotting Red Pine that had fallen over. That stump in the OP's post makes my heart skip a beat. Fine fatwood scrapings ignite easily with a fire steel. I'm a fatwood junkie and can hardly pass a good tree without harvesting some.

YES! Called pitch wood here. In this region, big old western larch is a most dependable source. Some Doug Fir, but they don't get really large around here. Many fire wood cutters leave that end of the tree in the woods due to its extreme weight. When I drop a tree, I start on that end and rounds can weigh a couple hundred lbs.

Often such will gum up ones saw, and one has to shift to some cleaner wood for a bit to clear the chain. Live trees will literally bleed quarts of pitch, but we're not allowed to take those. Season it for a couple years and one only has to threaten it with a match to light it off.

I remember those. A friend of my Dad had one and if i remember correctly the porous rock was lava rock.

We call it pine lighter around home. I’ll be using some here in a bit to get the wood stove going.

My lineman buddy brings me old, non treated cedar power poles that they remove.... it's crazy dry and burns hotter than hell.....couple small pieces under the almond or oak firewood and hit it with the plumbers torch for about 20 seconds and done.

Dwayne,

Ponderosa stumps are the easiest to find. Mostly because the forests in Central and Eastern Washington contain so many of them.

I just look for old rottenish looking stumps with “fingers” of less rotted wood coming from the top of the stump. The fingers contain the resin that helps prevents rot.

yes, i can smell it

Stoolhead by any other name, would stink as much.

You out yourself and you can't help it. After only 3 months.

Must be lonely down there in BFT.

Dwayne,

Pondo is about all we get. Big knots, or sometimes a tree will blow over and die. (shallow soil, high bedrock, wet ground, windstorm)

bottom side or bottom limbs (after falling) will be pitchy after a few years.

Just sappy when fresh.

If old enough most of tree will rot away and only the pitchy parts left.

Some Doug Fir, but they don't get really large around here.

In the Cascades the old growth fir would rot away sometimes leaving a core of black pitch 2’ in diameter. The stuff was very heavy and brittle. It was as hard as glass and all my fires were started with a bic lighter. The pine pitch was really good stuff to get whenever I was over east and I always kept a couple of 6” slabs a 1/2” thick in my hunting pack.

Had a natural gas starter in the first house wife and I had. Pretty sure you could burn watermelons in such a fireplace.

Those work great as well as old cedar fence posts. You can split that stuff with a butter knife!