Make your own fatwood

I may be way off base here, but I associate fatwood with long leaf pines. As for the make your own, I'm sure it would work. If I were doing it, I'd drill some small holes in the piece (1mm or less) to open the surface area, then bake the pine in an oven to get it really dry and hot, then I'd submerge it while hot in a mixture of hot wax cut with some mineral spirits or kerosene-- the thinking here is that as the air inside the wood structure cooled, it would have to draw some liquid into the structure.

a lot of work when you really get to it, but you are trying to make fatwood not just a fire starter. For that, I'd fill a small paper cup with dryer lint and pour enough wax in to wet the lint and then press out the excess by stacking up another cup. The edges of the cups light quickly and the lint/wax puck burns for about 5 minutes.

 

I'm pretty sure it's impossible to make fatwood like you are doing. You would be better off using sawdust with your method, let it mix up well with the paraffin wax and then put them in some sort of moulds such as egg cartons to set.

 

I think you've set yourself a task there. If I were going down that route I think the best I could come up with would be to set up a bain-marie outside and leave it pecking away. Not sure it would amount to much though. Essentially what you are trying to do is to make something akin to a crude version of Dymondwood they use to make those gaudy knife handles. I think the missing factor is “pressure”............Look more at old stumps for what you are after. Graceful degradation - The resin wells up there when that part of the tree still has some functionality but the top part is damaged or missing.

 

If you really wanna "make" fatwood, wait til winter when the sap's down in the roots & cut a living pine down above ground. However many feet you leave above ground will be your fatwood in spring when the stump tries to push the sap back up in the tree, it'll run out the top of the stump. Then harvest the stump. voila.

 

I don't think it is fatwood ninjas,it might be pine tar ninjas harvesting.

 

That Killa Zilla in your avatar should do just fine!

 

What about Cedar? Does what we call red Cedar in Ky produce fat wood? It is very common as an invasive volunteer re-growth tree and will get big quick.

 

Thank you all for your knowledgeable and creative posts on this thread. I am so happy to have found this site. I always have queries and perhaps-wacky ideas. Until now, I have not had the right venue.

Pialia, I'm sure you've thought of this before, but how about borrowing a friend's chainsaw, and then returning it with a good bundle of fatwood? Also, would spreading a tarp or two around the stump help catch the flying chunks of wood? Wonder if the "chainsaw in a can" (which is really just the chain with 2 handles and works far better than I imagined) could work for you here?

My questions:

Where I live, in the Ponderosa-pine covered mountains of NM, I'm sure that I can find stumps with fatwood in the Spring... but for right now, I'd like to make some fatwood or firestarters with the refrigerated bacon, chicken & beef fat I've kept for ages which I suspect may not be safe to eat anyway.

Clearly this would be OK to use in an open outdoor fire, but could it be used in a wood stove or fireplace? Would it create a heavy creosote chimney build-up, or clog the interior of the stove? Explode?

I have lots of dryer lint, and can get lots of sawdust easily, so really appreciate the the tips for creating pucks of fire-starter using dryer lint or sawdust. And I do have lots of candle-stumps around, so that would be a good use for them.

Has anyone tried using soap slivers? Once upon a time, soap was made from fat, right?

Thanks again for your knowledge and generosity.

 

Wouldn't it just be simpler to use old tree resin ? I tossed some chunks in my little stove today. It was a bit too much and it melted then lit with a horrendous flame. But it also seeped a bit out of the air vents in the stove and the stump was burning also. It melts then gives off a huge flame. That was the point of an earlier post that I made. If you don't have fatwood around you, use pine resin. Same effect.

 

is it only pine that works or do other conifers like fir or spruce trees work if you find good saturated pieces/knots?