make your own fatwood + nuclear firestorm tinder paks

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Bushman5

Joined
Oct 31, 2007
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Homemade fatwood:

Start by shaping a piece of well seasoned cedar or pine or balsa into a squarish block, size is your preference. Next, use a double boiler to melt pitch. Get the pitch boiling. Put the shaped wood into the hot pitch and boil for several hours. Remove and let cool. The thin hot liquid pitch will penetrate the wood pores easily. Wipe off the excess with a solvent damped rag while the pitch is still hot and set aside for several days to cure. (this allows the pitch to crystallize inside the wood.

I have used several of my own fatwood sticks and I cannot find any difference to ones found the woods. In fact, i found the pitch content is more uniformly distributed in the wood with the man made ones.

Nuclear firestorm tinder paks:

get some "watchmakers cases" from Lee Valley Tools. You can get tiny ones to large ones! Remove lid. Pour in pine shavings/sawdust, magnesium shavings (about 1 tablespoon full) to about 2mm from the top of the watchmakers case. Boil a 3 ratio mixture of wax, petroleum jelly, and pitch and mix well. Decant over the pine shavings/sawdust/magnesium shavings until thoroughly soaked. Add a PJ cotton ball on top while the pitch is still warm. Cover with the lid and seal with tape. These are easily pocket able or placed into truck, pocket, survival kit pack etc etc etc

To use, take your firesteel and shower sparks over the cotton ball. it wil quickly light up and melt the pitch/wax underneath. This will burn hot and ignite the magnesium shavings and sawdust. It will continue to flare up, with a flame of about about 3" wide x 6" tall. Burn time is around 20 minutes. The mag shavings will spit/flare flaming globs of pitch all over your small branches, firewood etc and quickly ignite them


action pics soon, waiting for friend with camera to have time to take sequential pics including flare up and burn!

:thumbup::cool:
 
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Nuclear firestorm tinder packs...Hmmm. Great idea. Have to make some of those. Can't wait to see the pics!
 
He he, love it! I love playing around with incendiary mixtures, I used to have access to all sorts of stuff as a science/chemistry teacher! These sounds really good.

I might be tempted to embed a strike-anywhere or lifeboat-style match into the mixture with the head protruding for quick lighting.

For something faster burning, a mix of potassium nitrate and powdered sugar could be mixed with the sawdust/magnesium. I used to make fireworks like that. Careful though!!!

Sounds an ideal firelighter to carry in my Busse 'nuclear tough' survival sheath!

Thanks!!! You could post a link to this on the Busse forum - some of the folks there would like it I think!
 
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Besides watchmaker cases, you could recycle those little aluminum tea candle shells after they're burned out.
 
Bushman5 said:
Homemade fatwood:

Start by shaping a piece of well seasoned cedar or pine or balsa into a squarish block, size is your preference. Next, use a double boiler to melt pitch.
Click to expand...

Sounds great! Where do you get your pitch? Can it be bought in small quantities?

Stitchawl
 
I think you actually can buy pitch in flakes or blocks, i just dont know where. I gathered a bunch last weekend and "rendered" it down out of the bark and wood. Ended up with just over a cup full.

MathewDanger, you can split these up
 
Interesting idea. I can't imagine it is much fun scraping pitch from the bottom of your pot though...
 
I heated it up to boiling and poured about 95% of it out. All the bark that was left over still had some pitch (thoroughly soaked actually) and all i did was freeze the pot and bark, then shattered the bark into usable pieces of firestarting material (wrapped them in wax paper) . Almost no pitch residue in the pot when i removed the bark.

its my dedicated wax / pitch meting pot anyways.
 
PICS!!!!

my firekit:
001-3.jpg


lid off revealing contents:

002-4.jpg


nuclear firestorm tinder pak: (those matchheads are over 1/2" wide)

005-3.jpg


prepped with P/J cotton ball prior to ignition & detonation:

007-2.jpg
 
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firesteel spark: I missed the cotton ball the first time, it was black out!

014-3.jpg

cotton ball ignition
016.jpg

018.jpg

019.jpg

020.jpg

021-1.jpg


FLAREUP!

022.jpg

023.jpg

025.jpg
 
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035-1.jpg

036.jpg

038.jpg

039.jpg


magnesium powder ignition

041.jpg
OOOH a Emerson SNUBBY!
042.jpg


anyways, got about a 20 minute HOT high intensity burn from this firestarter. Iused the smallest watchmakers case from Lee Valley for this one. The biggest onesburn for about 30 min to 45 min.
 
Sheesh! This thing can be used to smelt iron ore!!! I've got all the ingredients except the pitch! Gonna go out tomorrow and find me some leaking pine trees...

Stitchawl
 
a couple questions for you,
1) whats a double boiler?
2) how much pitch do you need?
3) do you melt just the pitch or pitch in water?

thanks
 
A double boiler is basically a pot in a pot. There's a pot filled with boiling water and a second pot actually holding what you're trying to cook.
 
yoda4561 said:
A double boiler is basically a pot in a pot. There's a pot filled with boiling water and a second pot actually holding what you're trying to cook.
Click to expand...

thats right, the idea is the top pot is NOT is direct contact with the burner, this prevent overheating and FIRE inside your home. The boiling water and steam in the lower pot heats up the contents of the top pot, but without the fire hazard.


RickPoole, you can get pitch from any pine, douglas fir tree etc or any tree oozing pitch (also called sap) from a wound int he tree. One can also take an ax, make a gash in the tree trunk and wait a few days to a week for the pitch to ooze. I just walk thru the woods and find my own.

For that little firestarter i used about a tablespoon of pitch, and another of wax. It would have worked better if i had eliminated the sawdust and just used more magnesium :D
 
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