fatwood beads...

mtnfolk mike

mtnfolk mike

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there was a thread a while back on how folks carry fatwood/tinder...

i've been thinking about making some fatwood beads, to put on some knife lanyards or to toss in some PSK's.... :o i love the stuff... i have a ton of it...

anybody tried making beads or anything else out of fatwood.. :)
 
Nice "outside the box" thinking, Mike! My only concern si that if the beads are too small, shaving off fatwood for firestarting could be dangerous.

Let's see some prototypes!

-- FLIX
 
maybe if you didn't make them spherical, but shaped them sort of like mike and ike's or something, ~1"x.3". you could string a bunch end-to-end and slide one off the end of the string when you needed one, retie the not afterwards.
 
FLIX said:
Nice "outside the box" thinking, Mike! My only concern si that if the beads are too small, shaving off fatwood for firestarting could be dangerous.

Let's see some prototypes!

-- FLIX
Click to expand...

i thought about that too... i'm going to have to see what i can come up with...

i was also thinking you could even put them on zipper pulls on packs and such.....
 
Elongated beads would probably work best if you want to be able to shave bits off of them. You could shape them into cougar claws, so when you wear them they'd be fashionable too. ;)
 
how about not scraping them... What about using a large rock to crush them?? Pull a bead off the string crush it between two rock and use the fire steal to light it up. I done it before and it worked great. But i used just smaller chunks of fatwood.

Sasha
 
Good idea Mike. Would be idea if it were shaped like bone hairpipe like you see in some Native American jewelry.
 
sorry for the crappy pic.. but here's a few i made today... nothing fancy... just wanted to give it a try...:o
IMG_1745.jpg
 
I use a smalll pocket knife and split them into matchstick size pieces of wood and use that to build on my tinder, BTW I always keep a 3" piece of fatwood o my keyring.
 
mtnfolk mike said:
sorry for the crappy pic.. but here's a few i made today... nothing fancy... just wanted to give it a try...:o
IMG_1745.jpg
Click to expand...

I like second and third. you'd just use the entire small piece of fatwood for tinder. they're big enough you could safely whittle off some tinder, and crush the rest as per sasha's suggestion. they're also both small enough that you could attach a significant amount of tinder onto a length of cordage for convenience.
 
That's a great, out of the box, idea. It makes so much sense, I can't believe noone has thought of it before. I believe I'll be trying that out myself.

Thanks!
Todd
 
I am planning to take some and whittle it to 1"x .5" X3", dip it in polyuerathane and glue a .25X2.25 ferro rod to one side. Cut a bit of hacksaw blade and wrap the lot with jute twine- a small self contained emergency fire- may even tuck a little cottob ball under the jute.
2Door
 
The only thing I see as a problem with this is the fact that the resin crystals in fatwood tend to come off on everything IME. It looks like you may have sanded those pieces down HD or is the photo fuzzy? Did you drill them out, if so what size bit and how many did you have to bust before you got that bunch of good ones? What size stock are you starting with? Thanks, for the neat idea; generally I carry some broke down pieces in a small zip bag you find in the craft section of a store.
 
1Tracker said:
The only thing I see as a problem with this is the fact that the resin crystals in fatwood tend to come off on everything IME. It looks like you may have sanded those pieces down HD or is the photo fuzzy? Did you drill them out, if so what size bit and how many did you have to bust before you got that bunch of good ones? What size stock are you starting with? Thanks, for the neat idea; generally I carry some broke down pieces in a small zip bag you find in the craft section of a store.
Click to expand...

i did sand them a bit, just to round off the edges... YES the pic is fuzzy/crappy....:o

they are all drilled out, i don't recall how big the bit is.... i didn't break any at all, before i go this bunch... i tried to find a not too big of a piece of fatwood, maybe 1/2 in thick or so and some what squared, i then cut them down to the desired size... i think these were all made from one piece... and i still have some left over...

thanks for the compliments.. it's a fun little project...:D
 
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