Ok. I'm lost. What's a super cedar? Is it a prepared firestarter? Sent from my LML212VL using Tapatalk
That’s exactly how I had mine then whittled it down so it was mostly just the resin filled parts. I can only imagine the incredible smell while you cut those up. Think you’d keel over and find yourself in heaven. The doug firs here have it mostly since loggers left the stump then the spire from the fallen filled with pitch. If you were to see the old forests here with the stumps, that’s All fatwood since it doesn’t rot. Did you just give it away at the GTG, sorry I haven’t perused all those pictures but saw a block for a prize!
Yes sir , we had tons of those fat wood stumps years ago. Farmers have dug them out of the fields, mining companies have dug them up as they were opening pits, there is even a company in Brunswick GA that processes them for the resin in them. Yes sir, I gave a lot of the smaller pieces away at the GTG, one big, very rich piece went as a door prize, probably 2-3 yrs worth of firestarter. I have one small short stump that is x-tra premo stuff...I'll take a picture of it next time I split ba little off...and yes, you can smell the turpentine in it...air freshener
T.Jeff Veal funny you should mention that. I went through all my High School in Brunswick. Hercules Corp. was a going concern back then. They had a huge operation dredging up old stumps from the swamps and freighting them in by rail. The stumps, skinned up by the clamshell dredge, had a tremendous odor of turpentine/pine resin that permeated the surrounding area for miles. Hercules would then shred, cook them down and fraction the resulting viscous liquid into turpentine and dozens of other organic chemicals. I had thought that the plant was sold around 2002 or so but don't know for sure. If you have ever read the Foxfire books (from Georgia), there is an article where they split up fatwood fine and cram a huge iron wash pot full. The pot is upended on a boulder that has a special channel chiseled in it. The pot is sealed to the boulder with clay, with only the channel as an opening. Firewood is stacked all around the pot, except where the opening is, and lit off. The tarry resin, cooked out of the splits under the pot, would run out the channel to be collected. The Old Timers would use the tar in liniments and as medicine for themselves and their animals. Sorry to run on so but you touched off a bunch of memories!
If I could describe the smell, it’s like Key Lime pie, times 10 million. The freshness of it was so intense that keeping this in a bin way in the garage was alarming. The cores were so laden with it, that it’s like looking at that hard candy made in the winter because it hardly takes much to split it and when it did split it fell out. I had this black bin with Yellow top, believe you can find it at Home Depot or the like filled with it, now I’ve got several different spots for it so I’m able to get some cut to easier sizes. It’s actually quite fun looking at it because it almost seems unnatural.
I have read some of the Foxfire books, don't remember that particular story. This is the name of the company now. They had several big piles of short pine logs and stumps there. A good friend of mine's family had a stumping business in the 70's & 80's. They used a dozer with a special blade to split and uproot the stumps, loaded and hauled to the coast. They did a 1000 acre tract close to our house. look them up
Poor Screwloose has been so busy he can't seem to find much time for the forum. I try to keep in contact and I'd like to know how that saw is doing; the one he won at the gtg. Also, he and his wife really turned out to be fine people indeed.
