Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How much pitchwood you use

to start a fire?

Just a little for a boost or pour the coal to it? Old timey fire starter for those city folk.

It’s 80 degrees. What’s a fire!

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About 4 or 5 sticks the width of a french fry is plenty. About 4 yrs ago, we got home from the monthly grocery run, cold, stove cold out...she says you unload the groceries, I'll get a fire going. I was out stacking stuff in the freezer in the shop, looked back at the flintshack, Jeezus there was 2 feet of orange flame coming out the metalbestos. We have had wood heat as primary for a half century...she still hasn't figured it out. Words were spoken.

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I use a propane torch and battery powered blower. Works on bbq pit too!

Usually a paper towel and about 3 sticks the size of a pencil. Well cured wood takes right off. Sometimes use real pitch snatched from trees when camping.

At both our wood-heat cabins. A bit of birch bark between two 3" diam spruce pieces either side of the firebox topped with 1" or less spruce kindling ....-No f**k'n around! If the kindling is a bit pitchy, all the better.

It is pretty much a necessity at the remote cabin. The big wood cook/heating stove has the chimney on the left, firebox right next to it, with no direct opening. The draft feeds across the top, down the right side, across the bottom, then up the left into the chimney. Seams and lids on top leak....

Great for heating/baking, but hell to get started without smoking us out, but there are 1 1/2 x 4" cleanout plugs all the way around. One can start the firebox, and shove some tinder into the under-chimney cleanout and start it to get the draft going. It works sometimes. Sometimes not. More better to just run the propane torch in there to get the chimney up-draft going.

It's danged near an art form. I leave "how to" directions for visitors. And I've cut small screen-coverd vents in the gable ends for - um - "cabin draft" , just under the ridgepole for the times someone doesn't. It may take an hour before the smoke clears enough to be livable inside ....

I would go with a 12 - 12 pitch.

I think it was my aunt, built her first fire in the iron stove, called Uncle, something wasn't right........

Uncle got there, she had packed the stove full of fat pine and lit it off...........

He said the sides were red hot and you could see the flames 'THROUGH THE METAL'........

I only have outdoor fires as we have a pellet stove in the house. I collect pine pitch stumps when camping on the East side. Sit out in my woodshed when the wife is mad at me and split it as fine as I can and put it in ziplock bags. Nine year old granddaughter is in charge of the fireplace at her house. Her mother only lets her use 2 pieces to build the fire. Neighbors love it as does the sister-in-law.

We called it fatwood.

Jawing with a couple other fellows on the banks of the Tanana on this fire-starting stuff, the Athabaskan told us " I use the old Indian method my Dad taught me - a cuppa Diesel works every time."

Kinlin we call it

The sh*t I learn from this site. What the hell is pitchwood? Never heard of it. (City boy, now in the country. Hey, I'm tryin' to learn something here.)

Every year I look for pitch stumps. I prefer red fir but pondersa pine works. I cut about six inch thick. Been using one thirty inch block all winter and have about half left. I cut pencil diameter pieces. Put kindling on top and a couple pieces of wood, about the diameter of my wrist. Light and you have a fire. Granpa called it trading wood. To me it's not kindling. Kindling is split from fire wood. Put to much pitch wood in and it looks like your burning tires, and the stove starts puffing.

Fat Lighter is the pith of dead pines around here. VERY hard but will split in splinters fairly easily... I have a pile that will probably last me 20 years. I know where there is enough to last 200 years if I could live long enough
to use it.

Lighter knot..

Pitch is formed by the concentration of resins in a conifer's heartwood and roots, as well as on the bark, especially around scars and near the base of the trunk or cut stump. Wood that's impregnated with pitch is interchangeably called lightwood or pitch wood.

I had a few shore lunches while fishing with Cree Indian guides in Canada. They started fires with pieces partical board that were soaked in kerosene.