A few years ago I picked up off the ground enough to fill the 50 pound bags sunflower seed comes in. 4 of them. I stashed them in the old stone garage. When I went to grab some in December some animal had shredded every single one of them. I'm guessing a squirrel and they/them partner.
I've tried it several times, mainly because people here suggested it, and implied that it worked...I wasn't impressed. Too me, dried "noodles" from ripping a log work WAY better!
Did you let them dry out really good? Any moisture and they’ll not perform that great. They should burn just like fatwood. Check out the last 90 seconds of the video I linked.
Don't get a lot of cones where I am. I have used pitch as a fire starter before that I scraped from a branch wound.
I have some white pine trees, but haven't seen any large pine cones from them yet...these were from blue spruce.
Years ago when we had the cottage on the Cape , Pine cones were everywhere. Easy enough to gather some up and they worked great. Not a ton of them local around here.
I have used white pine cones for fire starters also. Worked well enough considering the price but didn't last as long as commercial fire starters.
One cone lasted a total of about 90 seconds until it was out. I'd say it had a good flame for 45-60 seconds.
We've used a few SYP cones from the tre in our yard. Worked ok. We also use planer shavings tied in a bag, or just twist up some paper from bills under kindling to get it going.
They were my fire starter for 20 years. Bit of newspaper to get them going, they'd light and burn far longer than when the newspaper was ash and lit the logs. They were Lodgepole pinecones. We had very old big one in the back yard, decades of old dry cones at the base.
Every year I rake up and throw away enough pine cones to fill a 777. I do burn them on occasion. They do burn well, but they are kind of a pain to keep around. They take up a lot of space. But they do burn great!
