Fatwood: What is it and how do I get it?

Ken C.

Ken C.

Jack of all trades, master of none.
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I'm curious about fatwood. I keep hearing about it and how it works great for fire starting. What exactly is it and how does one go about obtaining it without having to buy it?
 
It's heartwood from a fallen pine. After the pine tree falls, the roots continue to pump sap into the tree, not realizing its fate. After a long period of time, most of the outer wood rots away while the saturated heartwood, or fatwood, remains. Your best bet is to look for pine stumps in the woods. If you can't find a pine stump, you can always make one by cutting down a pine tree and waiting a while.
 
Ken, if you want a piece or two just to check out, drop me a line. I'd be happy to mail you some.

Fatwood is good stuff; cheap, natural, weatherproof, and reliable. :thumbup:
 
Carolina River Rat said:
It's heartwood from a fallen pine. After the pine tree falls, the roots continue to pump sap into the tree, not realizing its fate. After a long period of time, most of the outer wood rots away while the saturated heartwood, or fatwood, remains. Your best bet is to look for pine stumps in the woods. If you can't find a pine stump, you can always make one by cutting down a pine tree and waiting a while.
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+1

On a recent outing with River-8 and Rescue Mike they showed me what to look for in a fatwood stump. A pine that has been blown over, struck by lightning or cut down. Basicly a catistrophic event caused the tree to die with the roots still in the ground.

River-8 found a good stump, you can see in the pic the dead rotten punky wood that surrounds the fatwood. If you take your knife or axe and hit the hard wood you can instantly tell by how solid it is. You can see in some of the pics the dark translusant almost purple color, that is very saturated with pitch.

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Some great pieces that I collected.

Picture034.jpg


Here you can see the saturated fatwood!

Picture051.jpg
 
Lovely stump in that pic, Snakedoc. Another source is to find a house where they're putting down a heart pine floor. I got a huge stockpile of it from the last flooring job I did.
 
Can you only harvest fatwood from pine trees? I would guess that any sap producing tree that met the same fate as the pine would produce fatwood or a variant thereof.
 
Ken C. said:
Can you only harvest fatwood from pine trees? I would guess that any sap producing tree that met the same fate as the pine would produce fatwood or a variant thereof.
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I don't think so. I'm not sure why, though. The only fatwood stumps I've seen have been pine.
 
Its the pine resin which accumulates in the wood that makes this different from other stumps.
Very flammable - burns almost as if the wood was dipped in kerosene.
 
Pine trees have what they call "pine tar" that you can render out of them with heat. Ive seen a couple Ray Mears episodes where they do that. Its the same principal as the pine knot, if you collect a bunch of fallen pine knots they burn brighter than the rest of the tree.
 
SpookyPistolero said:
Ken, if you want a piece or two just to check out, drop me a line. I'd be happy to mail you some.

Fatwood is good stuff; cheap, natural, weatherproof, and reliable. :thumbup:
Click to expand...

like wise ken i just havested about 10-15 lbs of fatwood the other day you want and PM and i will ship ya some Indiana fatwood.:thumbup: in its natural state so you will know what it looks like in the wild
 
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