Christmas Tree Fatwood

P

PDE

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Well, what do you guys think? I cut the base off my Christmas tree and it was a little wet so I have it drying out. I thought it would make some good fatwood due to all of the pockets of sap. I am always amazed at how well these trees light up and produce a fifteen foot high flame. I thought instead of just burning it I would get a little more use out of it. Anyone tried this out before?
 
Good idea. Once the pitch settled a bit, my dry climate would probably firm it up into fatwood nicely. Let us know how long it takes in your area.

DancesWithKnives
 
PDE said:
Well, what do you guys think? I cut the base off my Christmas tree and it was a little wet so I have it drying out. I thought it would make some good fatwood due to all of the pockets of sap. I am always amazed at how well these trees light up and produce a fifteen foot high flame. I thought instead of just burning it I would get a little more use out of it. Anyone tried this out before?
Click to expand...

Good idea for the fatwood. I never saw, nor lit a tree up, though it must be pretty cool.
 
You can't make fatwood like that but being a spruce/fir it should burn well anyway !
 
My 4WD club used to take a whole trailer load of dry Xmas trees out to the desert at the end of January. When you toss several on at once, it illuminates a pretty large area!

DancesWithKnives
 
It is kind of a New Years tradition for us, we collect as many trees as we can get and light them up. Last year we had twenty six trees. When you see them go up, you ask yourself why would anyone want one of these in their house?! It really is a sight to see.
 
When we had live trees I always chopped em up then used it to supplement a fire on NYE. Was we usually started putting the parts to the Christmas tree on around 11:30.
 
Sounds like another good use for them.

If a person were trying to create fatwood, I assume he would have to cut at least several feet off the bottom of the Xmas tree trunk then let it sit in a vertical position for a long time to get the pitch to settle into the lowest part of the trunk, then solidify/dry. I'm assuming only the very bottom of the trunk would have a sufficient concentration of pitch to look something like naturally occurring fatwood. It will be interesting to see if it works and how long it takes.

DancesWithKnives
 
Vacumn chamber bag and pump, a bunch of 1" x 1" x 1" x 6" pieces of BALSA wood (porus, easy to saturate), hot runny pitch (sap).

Insert wood pieces into vacumn chamber bag, pour in hot pitch, seal, let vacumn pump remove air. Sap penetrates wood fully.

one could do this on a commercial scale with massive heated vacumn chambers.
 
I still don't think you could make fatwood per se as it's the roots of the tree that continue pumping the resinous sap into the stump !
 
pitdog said:
I still don't think you could make fatwood per se as it's the roots of the tree that continue pumping the resinous sap into the stump !
Click to expand...

Well, of course you can't. It still makes for a good substitute, though.
Let us see what happens!
 
Theyll burn well no matter what, every new years in Ocotillo wells people brim their Christmas trees and make a massive pile of them, something like 20' high. And light it up! Quite a sight to see! I plan to cut mine up with my silky pocket bot and new BK9 and use it for fire wood
 
Bushman 5: That sounds somewhat similar to the process that they use to make Dymondwood. I was told that they laminate the layers with epoxy then finish it under heat and pressure.

I have some Dymondwood kali/escrima sticks and boken. Those things are so tough that nobody wants to train against them---they tear up even very hard natural wood.

DancesWithKnives
 
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