The Great Fatwood Showdown

[lambertiana]

Over the years I have seen pictures of fatwood from various species, and wondered how they would compare to the Ponderosa fatwood that I find in the Sierras. So, I contacted a few forum members and they graciously sent me some examples from around the continent. Today I did an overall comparison of them.

A list of the contenders, with a picture of shavings done with a large construction pencil sharpener, scrapings done with the spine of a knife, and a small sample of a feather stick:

First, typical Ponderosa fatwood that I find in the Sierra middle elevations

Some exceptional Ponderosa fatwood (I've only found one stump like this)

Some British Columbia Douglas Fir, sent to me by Pitdog

Unknown Alabama species, characterized as typical good stuff, sent to me by 91Bravo. Could be Longleaf, Shortleaf, or Loblolly pine.

Exceptional quality unknown Alabama species, from 91Bravo

Virginia Pine from Tennessee, sent to me by my brother (Don M)

Slash Pine from south Florida, sent by FTR-14C

And for comparison sake, some of the generic fatwood sold at Walmart

Initial observations:

Typical Ponderosa - more orange than most, has a strong aroma of pine

Exceptional Ponderosa - pale color, super saturated with resin, sticky

Douglas Fir - very saturated, dark, and the strongest pine-sol smell, sticky

Slash - milder smell

Alabama, typical - medium smell, reminiscent of anise

Alabama, exceptional - very mild smell, also reminisent of anise, does not look like it has much resin

Virginia - medium smell

Walmart - mild smell, faintly reminiscent of stale urine (my wife thinks it smells like a hospital, whatever that means)

 

[lambertiana]

For the feather sticks, I tried with two knives - an Opinel #7 (very thin edge) and an older Spyderco Para (thick edge bevel). Surprisingly, the thicker edge bevel of the Para gave better overall control when making the feather sticks. I noticed a few standouts:

Easiest to cut - Douglas Fir. Virginia pine and slash pine were also pretty easy. The Alabama pines and ponderosa samples were a bit harder. The walmart fatwood was so hard that I gave up trying to make a feather stick. The Douglas Fir was more brittle and didn't make a pretty feather stick.

All species made scrapings pretty easily when using the sharp spine of a knife. I used a Laconico folder for this. The one unusual one was the slash pine, the scrapings clumped together on the edge of the spine instead of falling loose.

On to the ignition tests. For this comparison, I chose to use the shavings generated with a large construction pencil sharpener. I chose this because it was the easiest way to get uniform thickness pieces. I know that scrapings will light easier, but if they all light on the first strike it's hard to tell which one is better. I found that there is some variability between species when using thicker shavings. For some of them, the shavings stayed together in one piece, while others (most notably the Douglas Fir) were more brittle and the sharpener gave a pile of splinters. To try to equalize the test, I attempted to break up the shavings of the more ductile species to give about the same surface area for the spark.

I used a blastmatch as the spark source. The reason for that choice is that it is easy to get very consistent sparks every time with it. I did the test twice with each species, and also timed how long the pile of shavings burned (I tried to use the same amount of shavings each time). If I only give one result for the species, it means that it behaved exactly the same both times. The results, given as number of strikes with the blastmatch to ignite, and burn time:

Ponderosa, typical: 3 strikes, 2 minutes 30 seconds
Ponderosa, exceptional: 1 strike, 1 minute 45 seconds and 3 minutes
Douglas Fir: 1 strike, 2 minutes 30 seconds
Alabama, typical: 6 strikes, 2 minutes 10 seconds
Alabama, exceptional: 1 strike, 2 minutes 10 seconds
Slash: 3 strikes and 6 strikes, 2 minutes 20 seconds and 3 minutes 15 seconds (taken from two different pieces)
Virginia: 2 strikes, 2 minutes 25 seconds and 2 minutes 15 seconds
Walmart: 12 strikes the first time 2 minutes 5 seconds, I gave up the second time at around 15 strikes

The Douglas Fir and the exceptional samples of Ponderosa and unknown Alabama species were the standouts, they lit like napalm.

 

[lambertiana]

Now for the burn pictures. For the comparison burn pictures, I just used a match so I could get them all burning as close to the same time. I started from the top in this picture, and it probably took 15 seconds to move down the row and get them all lit. I then started taking pictures to chronicle the sequence. Remember that in the first picture, the Douglas Fir on the left has been burning for about 15 seconds longer than the Ponderosa on the right. You can follow the burn through this sequence of pictures; it was about 3 minutes from the first picture to the last picture.
First, before lighting

 

[lambertiana]

Finally, I lit small sticks of it just for fun. Same order left to right: Douglas Fir, Alabama exceptional, Walmart, Slash, Ponderosa typical, Alabama typical, Virginia, Ponderosa exceptional

In reverse order, taken from the other side

After I knocked the burning sticks off the piece of wood, you can see that some of them left a good amount of melted resin on the board

And there was also some melted resin where I burned the piles

The walmart stick was very hard to light. All the others would ignite immediately with a match, but not the walmart fatwood.

This was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about how to work with various species of fatwood. My wife saw me working on it, and asked if she needed to contact the funny farm. She just doesn't appreciate the finer things in life.

And thanks to Pitdog, FTR-14C, 91 Bravo, and my brother for supplying samples from their neck of the woods.

 

[pitdog]

Great review buddy, it's funny that the Walmart stuff performed so badly, you kinda think fatwood is fatwood whatever the source eh !

In saying that I'd originally planned on sending you some really deep red stuff that appeared super high in resin causing it to be very brittle. It was very gnarly in shape though and I couldn't fit much at all in the box so decided to send the straight grained stuff that you received.I've since been using small amounts of the gnarly stuff to help get my woodstove going, it gives off some terrible black smoke another indicator I'd think of a very high resin concentration.

 

[Don M]

I think Carolyn has you figured out....

A lot of trees I have checked around here (Shortleaf and Virginia) don't have fatwood, but there are enough that do that you can usually find some. The sample I sent came from a standing trunk that only had fatwood on one side of the trunk, and only extended a short distance into the wood under the bark. Here is a picture from when I found it. I have other samples, one in particular from a stump far too rotted to identify the species. The fatwood I have is from a root near the surface, and it is very dense and hard, noticeably more so than the sample I sent.

 

[Big Chris]

That is pretty interesting. I normally use some I bought at Meijer. I also have some I found on pallets that works very well. I am always searching for fatwood when in the woods but have yet to be successful.
Nice write up though.

 

[Liam Ryan]

Yay Canada, lol.
Pitdog, you should sell some of that stuff, I am afraid I have a pile of the walmart fatwood and it does kind of leave a little to be desired.

 

[D_Boone]

Pretty cool, here in eastern NC fatwood can be found pretty easily. Its what we have always used to start fires. Love to collect it, love the smell. Great useful stuff, guess I never thought about other areas of the country and their local fatwood species.

 

[sicily02]

Man that was cool post with the pics and the test that you did.

Awesome


Bryan

 

[FTR-14c]

Well done brother, it looks like you had a blast.
Our fatwood varies greatly from tree to tree within the same species.
I understand the resin content depends on the time of year and how the tree dies.
Every once and a while I run into some of that hard stuff like Wallmart sells.
Sometimes its almost crystallized or petrified. There is not much you can do with it
but burn it.

 

[upnorth]

Interesting. I have a couple of boxes of that stuff from Honduras. I sorted through them and found about 10-15% extremely saturated, about 25% quite good and streaked through, the rest moderate to weak. But considering how much I get in a box, I have A LOT of extremely saturated F.W. which should last me for years, literaly.

 

[lightleak]

Excellent test and great documentation, thank you very much for this!

 

[jcl-MD]

Very cool !
I only get to use the Walmart tipe, I wonder how much better my little test would have turned out if I had other types of FW.

[video=youtube;xPVAmRgX1YQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPVAmRgX1YQ[/video]

Thanks for the info!

 

[Sulaco]

Great test, thanks for sharing and doing the hard work. Sorry I couldn't get some of mine to you this time around. I actually have a box ready to go if you still want it? PM me if so. I imagine mine is a lot like the Alabama stuff. It comes from either a long leaf or slash pine. Hard to tell since the stumps are at least ten or fifteen years old.

 

[jmacdoug]

so Douglas Fir actually works? I was under the impression that only pine trees produced fatwood!

 

[chuckinohio]

I've been using some fatwood from Menards, branded 'Northwoods'

The packaging says that its all from longleaf pine, and it does seem to do better than the Walmart stuff, judging from your comparison and troubles with it.
The "Northwoods' fatwood sems to behave better than the Walmart fare as far as making shavings and feathers, but occasionally there will be a hard piece that doesn't want to cooperate.

Not saying it's better than any others, just trying to add to the knowledge pool..

 

[lambertiana]

Sulaco - If you want to send it to me I won't turn it down. If you can narrow it down to longleaf or slash, I can then compare it with what I got from 91Bravo in Alabama to determine if that is longleaf, or if it is shortleaf or loblolly.

If I had to choose one as my go-to fatwood, I think I would choose the Douglas Fir. It doesn't make fancy feather sticks because it is on the brittle side, but it doesn't need to. The stuff is like gasoline, and it is easy to cut with a knife. If I were to need to carry it around a lot as part of a kit I would probably want one of the harder species, I don't think the Douglas Fir is hard or strong enough to withstand long term rough handling. But for actual firestarting and fire prep, it's hard to beat.

That being said, I have two small priority mail boxes with Sierra Ponderosa fatwood that I can send to anyone who lives in an area where they can't find their own. Those who are limited to what they can find at walmart are working with fatwood that just doesn't behave as well. I didn't know that anyone sold longleaf fatwood, and that should be good. But my experience with the walmart fatwood left me disappointed. I think they sell fatwood from Central America.

 

[Shotgun]

I've had the same experience with fuzzies. The wide bevel knives seem to be easier for me to make curls with. Thin bladed knives like my SAK tend to make me work harder for them.

Interesting about the store bought stuff. I don't shop at Walmart but at a local chain and the stuff I get from them is very high quality. Must be local stuff.

 

[Jack Black]

Fascinating thread Lambertiana. Thanks for taking the trouble to do it :thumbup: