Natural Tinder For Wet Weather !

pitdog

pitdog

Joined
Apr 13, 2007
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Yesterday I posted a thread about using Duct tape as tinder in wet conditions and commented that there were a few natural tinders I considered far better.
Well today I figured I'd put my money where my mouth is and demonstrate !

It's been raining constantly over here for weeks now so the chance of finding actual dry tinder is very slim. I didn't even attempt to find dry today as I wanted to show how even soaking wet tinder can be used.

I started off with some fluffy seed pod type tinder, this could just have easily been old mans beard, Cat tail seeds or even Cedar bark shavings.....think of this as the wick.

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I then looked for a Balsam Fir.

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I added some of the blister resin to my tinder, this stuff is a real life saver in really wet weather !

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My final addition was a little dried pine resin. This will maintain the fire once it's going.

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All ready to go !

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This took 5 strikes of my well worn cheap generic ferro-rod to ignite.

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This was how it looked after the 5 mins just before I put it out.

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Now am I likely to have all these tinders at hand at all times, obviously not. Often times I can't find any Balsam but I can always find old mans beard and dried pine resin, I can nearly always also find Fatwood ( no explanation needed on that as tinder ) so with those tinders I'm pretty confident in my ability to start a fire in even the wettest of conditions.

One last thing I also came across quite a few Dogwood trees today, a quick google search will give you info on the many uses for these trees but how can you identify them ? This is one easy way that I learnt, take a leaf from what you suspect might be a Dogwood and carefully rip the leaf apart, if it's a Dogwood it will remain joined together by tiny silk like fibres !

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Thanks for the lesson and the nice pic's I need to practice fire when wet more.
 
I have a walking stick made from a Dogwood sapling. It had a Wisteria vine wrapped around it real tight and eventually the tree grew over the vine completely enveloping it. When the guy that made the stick got it done, he saw a slight purple hew through the wood and realized it was the Wisteria vine inside the tree. Pretty neat! We have lots of Dogwoods in my part of the country.
 
Right up my alley, love it. I try to use local materials whenever possible. But believe me, it has taken me much more than five rod scratches to get some lit. Like 5-10 minutes worth once after a two day rain. I imagine that you must have a lock on wet weather fire starting by now, on the coast.
:thumbup:
 
Mmk, time to pose the dumb question; what is fatwood? I've seen it mentioned a dozen times in the last few days, but this forum is the only place I've heard of it.
 
Grease said:
Mmk, time to pose the dumb question; what is fatwood? I've seen it mentioned a dozen times in the last few days, but this forum is the only place I've heard of it.
Click to expand...

It's pieces of pine stump after the sap has saturated it.
 
Hmmm, light and crumbly...the stuff I've seen and used is dense with resin and plenty tough...are there more variations of fatwood?
 
Fatwood results when a tree falls or is knocked down - leaving the stump. The roots continue to supply sap but there is no tree for it to go to and the sap becomes condensed in the stump. Not all trees are equal but in the case of pine you end up with a very dense, sap-filled wood that will light easily and burn long. It does emit a nasty smoke so don't cook over it. I often carry a small piece of fatwood in my woods bag just in case I can't find enough good or dry tinder. The light and crumbly stuff is punkwood. Completely different animal but it has it's uses as well. Punkwood is best used charred as a coal extender in a tinder box or similar application.
 
Let's clear some stuff up. Essentially the thing that makes Fatwood so childishly easy to get a fire going with is it contains a bunch of terpene, so think terpentine. That substance is concentrated in the resin. When you see a damaged pine with a scab and a clot of resin, that's going to going to hold a lot of terpene. Scrape a bit off and whack your lighter on it and see what happens. The so called Fatwood occurs when a tree is damaged and a lot of that becomes concentrated in the part that is left as it tries to survive. Hence is it usually best to find in in old stumps. If you slice off a really good bit [very impregnated] it will seem greasy, and if the sliced piece is thin if will have a sort of translucent runny honey amber like appearance if you hold it up in front of the sun. Pine tar and pitch are derivatives and have been used by primitive cultures for all sorts of things. For all practical purposes when it comes to fire lighting is is no different to burning a bit of rubber band. The thing that gives an edge if you insist on lighting a fire from a spark rather than a lighter is that it still has some wood in it, so you can easily increase the surface area of the wick in the conventional manner.
 
Great post.

I firmly believe in carrying a plentiful variety of dry tinder, incl. some fatwood, vaseline impregnated cotton balls, and wetfire (and more). Its lightweight and doesn't take up much room in my pack, and I just naturally assume that if I am really in need of fire, the environment is cold and wet, and so am I. That's not the time when I want to be dicking around.
 
pitch (fatwood) is my preferred all season tinder with birch bark being second. My old standby is to axe or baton thru a wrist sized piece of dead,moist wood to get to the dry inside and scrape tinder. avoid stuff on the ground, find a skinny dead stander and push it over, use a tree vise to break into manageable pieces.....works on all species and forces you to select appropriate size materials,and by the time youve done all the work to get your tinder... your not cold anymore.
 
Thisis a good thread. I've ben using pitchwood/fatwood for years but I couldn't have told you what caused it.
 
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