some years back, lightning killed one of the pine trees in my back yard. The stump has been an excellent source of fat wood ever since. I cut a few slabs off this morning. These will be split into pencil sized sticks. They are THE best thing for starting a fire place or fire pit.
'

Good stuff. I can smell it from here.

pitch pine we call it!

I need to go cut some more, with the cold we have it's a perfect time. I have a pile of it and I love the turpentine smell.

One big difference, yours is black and sticks out of a hole in a bathroom stall.

That is hilarious

Love it. We call it fat lighter. Our hunting prop has it all over the place, I'm always grabbing big pieces to bring home and cut up. We let a kid get some once and he cut it up and put it into small gift bags and sold each for 10 bucks a piece.

While it maybe a rumor, I've always heard its iffy to start indoor fires with because of buildup of soot and possible creosote in the chimney.

Lighter knot… that stump is really rich with rosin.

There may be something to that if one were to just burn a bunch in the fireplace. I find that one or two pencil sized sticks are enough to get the fire going. I will be gifting local friends with several bags full. A bag is a nice gift to give your host when invited to a back yard fire pit party.

kindling...my grandfather sales firewood and throws in some starter with every load

We call that heart pine down here. I piped natural gas to my fireplace to start logs. I welded a piece of 1/2 pipe with holes about every two inches. It’s easy to start a fire, to hell with all that trouble starting a fire, smoking up the house.

This little chunk has been in my backpack for years and smells like turpentine. Some shavings never fail to start a fire, even with damp kindling.

Pitch pine, rich pine, kindling, fat pine, fat wood.....
It goes by alot of different names, but there is no doubt it is excellent fire starter.
I grew up in East Texas. That's "pine" country. Finding pitch pine isn't a problem.
Now, I'm in SW Oklahoma! Pine is abnormal rather than normal!
So I have to use high dollar "starter cubes"! 😖

As a kid, it was my job to find pine heartwood, cut up and split it into kindling! That was long ago and far away! 😐

Lighter Stump is what it's called in The Great State of Alabama!

My neighbor had a tray looking thing made out of cast iron. It looked kinda like a cornbread muffin pan but small squares that had porous rocks in the squares. He poured kerosene in the rocks, put it under grate to start his fireplace. It burned for a while before kerosene was burned up.

I did a lot of that myself

hook a chain to that stump and pull it... lots more under the dirt

Damn dude, do you carry your own rocks to make a fire ring too??

We used to pick it up when hunting Lots of it was pine knots, not stump wood If we did find a good stump we would come back later with an ax and saw

The fire in my stove has been burning continuously since Oct 20th or so. So we don't use much pitchwood. My grandson makes pitch bundles with around 60 "pencils" and sells them, I buy a few and gift them to neighbors around Christmas...kind of a cheapskate thing, but they are a woodsy rustic thing and people appreciate and use them more than a Hallmark card, which is only good for one fire.

LOL. It only weighs a few ounces, and it's become a bit of good luck charm.

Lighter'd is what the old folks used to call it around here. A contraction of lighter wood, I believe. You can have a lighter'd stump or a lighter'd knot. Or a board that is "pure lighter'd".

Mannlicher;
Top of the morning my friend, I hope you all aren't getting the frosty weather down there and that all in your life are well.

Thanks for that photo sir, my goodness that's interesting!

We get what we call "fat wood" in coniferous trees that have had some damage to them, for instance if it's been torqued in a heavy wind or snow load.

Even then, it's usually Doug Fir that gives us anything resembling the sap saturation that your entire stump has and to be clear it'll only be a very small portion of the tree. It's usually in the first say 6' up too, though very occasionally higher up, but it's smaller seams of pitch filled fiber then.

It's rare enough up here that when I get enough to make gifts to people it's a much appreciated one.

Like my friend to the west Kolofardos, I always carry some fat wood in my pack, along with another half dozen ways to start a fire.

When I'm teaching the Survival and First Aid night during the annual Hunter Safety class each spring at the gun club, I tell the students that they'll find me from a satellite thermal image because I intend to have that big a fire burning!

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

I wouldn't worry about using it....been using it to start fires in my wood stove for over 50 years...from late to November until April usually my stove never needs any to get the fire burning good...
Always clean the pipe out ever spring ready for the next fall....be lucky to get 1/4 of a coffee can of creosote out of a 24' pipe every spring....

I probably leave a hefty truck load of fat wood in the bush every year, my friend cuts it into strips about 5" long and puts them into a small box with a label, and sells it for extra $$$ to campers etc....

We call it gnarly wood at our Mt Adams elk camp. Good stuff!

Dwayne,

Interesting that you feel it’s fairly rare in your locale. Due south of you in Eastern Washington is full of fatwoood stumps. I can usually find a nice stump within about 10 minutes of looking. Sections of forest that have old logging or thinning activity are gold mines

Well, good luck is important.

I have piles of fat lighter chunks, and a few piles of lighter stumps from when I cleared some food plots. We burn lighter in the fire pit unless I'm cooking steaks over the coals.

LAFFIN’……right, pull it up….with a D9…..
A club I was in down LA way had a lot of cutover from fresh to 20 years old. One spot had a log road with a 3 ft bank on one side. Was a rich pine stump a couple feet back from the edge looking like it would be an easy grab. Had a 87 Chevy short bed manual trans and some 12.50 x 33 murders on it. Hooked a chain up and eased forward and did an easy tighten up to 4 wheels spinning. Backed up and gave it a good jerk. Same result. Gave it a too hard jerk that shook the ground so I thought. Far as I could tell I didn’t even loosen the dirt around that stump. It’s probly still there if somebody didn’t burn it.

Fat lighter here in GA. The very best is from longleaf pines which are native to us here in SW GA.

A hundred years ago, houses were built using that source of lumber and siding. Years ago, our next door neighbor knocked over his kerosene heater , igniting his longleaf pine constructed house. I was a volunteer firefighter back then and watched the entire house burn slap down to the foundation in 10 minutes. He lost everything. He ran out in his underwear and that was all he had left to his name. I ran to my house, got him a sweatshirt and sweatpants, socks and tennis shoes so he wouldn’t have at stand there looking embarrassed. Once a house like that gets going, it’s hell to get it put out.

The southern version of pine kindlin is usually yellow pine, knotty pine some call it. Used to see older homes with knotty pine dens and walls and such. That and some log home builders make round logs from it. Else wise it’s fit only for drippin sap all over and dropping tons of small cones and dead limbs. If you can find a big one 12” or more diameter that has died standing and is starting to lose bark and rotten wood off the trunk you’ll most likely have enough fire starter to last a long time.

The limbs that have gone rich and fallen are called pine knots. Like the one kept in the feller’s backpack. The longer ones torch knots, having somewhat of a handle away from the trunk running to a fat base where they joined the trunk. But the area starting 6 or 8 feet above the ground and down is the treasure. And the stump below ground is at least as rich. Problem is recovering it.

Paper companies in the south harvest Loblolly stumps in reclaimed cutover for turpentine production if rich stumps are there in sufficient number. They don’t seem as rich as yellow pine but way rich enough. I’ve seen open 18 wheeler trailers full to the top with them. But they have the heavy equipment to do the harvest.

Prowlin the woods up on the Blue Ridge now and white pine is the only pine from around 2500’ up. Quite a few knots from dead pines and blow downs but the trunks and stumps aren’t nearly as rich as flatland southern breeds. But here there are a multitude of low pine limbs in thicker stands that have died and remain attached to the tree. All the solid ones will have some rich wood toward the center. Great kindlin. But nothing beats those old yellow pine.

We have a "Pine Torch Church" historical site here in the Bankhead NF. Supposedly, all these dirt-poor folks had to light nighttime services were long Fatwood splinters. The church still stands with holders for the torches all along the walls.

Not something you’ll often, if ever, find around here! memtb

Here in Mississippi, it’s called “lighter knots” or fat wood. Smells like turpentine products and very useful for starting fire. One lighter knot will do the work of many small sticks of kindling. A local Boy Scout Pack would hit our deer camp property to search for the lighter knot stumps. They would harvest it, use honeysuckle vine or raffia as a tie for bundles to sale as a fundraiser for their gear. The Scouts liked nothing better than attack tree stumps using a hatchet. Wear your old duds tho, the rosin makes a sticky mess. A cheap fundraiser project. Free for the taking and the boundless energy of 10 year olds using sharp objects to destroy stuff. Good training for future Marines. They used to make dynamite from the stumps too.

My folks always said " rich pine" or " magic pine"

Same here. Must be a Mississippi thing. That's where our hunting camp is. Bogue Chitto.


Clyde

I lit the wood stove this morning with some fat lighter, a piece the size of a pencil. Dehydrated gasoline.

"Lighter Pine" here.

I had some acreage cleared up by track-hoe and dozer a few years ago and the operators were pretty impressed by how quickly the huge debris piles (each the size of city bus) burned up. Turns out they had scooped up all my lighter pine stumps I'd been collecting when they were pushing stumps and trees for the brush piles. Big lighter pine stumps and diesel will indeed burn up slash piles quick.

What I saw when I woke this AM...

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!

Knot a thing around here that I know of, my Pap used to gather a few pine knots to carry in his hunting coat. It got cold back then, the clothing wasn't like now, and Pap didn't how smart deer were. He built a fire and smoked Pall Malls, evidently our deer didn't go to college back then. He killed a lot of them. He is the only person I've ever known to use them, but pine is not prolific here.


We use paper cores at my work.
Like the one in a roll of paper towels,except they have a 3" ID and 1/2" walls.
Dense and heavy, they look like a paper pipe.
I cut them in about 1 inch chunks, stack 4 rows in a 5 gallon bucket,
then dump about a quart of kerosene in. After a couple days it wicks up through them, they aren't wet or oily just have enough. You can light them with a match, i use a propane torch for overkill. They burn hot and clean for about 15 minutes, enough that any small wood you throw on them goes right up. One per fire, a bucket lasts most of a season, once winter kicks off we don't let the fire go out.