I'll keep my eyes open. The most common pine around here is white pine. I don't know if this species is likely to produce fatwood. White pine doesn't get a lot of love around here as firewood, so a lot of it ends up at the dump. For now I'll keep buying it at HD, about $6 for a bag of 0.1 cubic ft., comes from Honduras.
Oops my bad I must have glanced over the topic thinking it was a pine knot discussion and state was involved. Thanks blacktail. Was up a bit late last night.
Yeah I don’t recall that white pine being a viable source, much too soft. Rots before it is even able to get to that stage. Hm well good luck anyways. : )
That's pretty awesome! I typically just use newspaper, but when available I save my "noodles" when I noodle a big round and use those as the fire-starter. Works fairly well.
My system is egg cartons (friends are handy), dryer lint and/or sawdust, a sealed double boiler (cheap from amazon), and bulk wax from EBay (25lbs).
I need to make another batch. The wife has a whole bucketful of candle stubs and she still has a gallon bag of beech wood chips from a couple of winters ago when I cut a bunch of beech " sticks" over the driveway. We now buy our eggs from kwik Trip, and they sell eggs in cardboard containers there. So, perfect timing.
I'm so glad I read this thread, though I thought I didn't need to since I have a small barrel (about 30gal) of pine fatwood. Very happy to have it, but whittling shavings off pieces with a pocket knife was a bit labour intensive. I'd not heard of the Forstner bit before. Can't wait to buy one and have at it. Thanks also to fishingpol for being the inspiration for the post. Actually I originally had loads more fatwood-laden pieces, but I didn't know what I had and burned many of them last winter just as normal softwood - eventually I put those pieces aside as they made too much black smoke - luckily I didn't discard the lot!
They’ll be ok for just a small pile in the fire, couple of “fingers” of the stuff work well too. If you don’t have to buy it, its the best thing yet. Mine is Douglas Fir Fatwood, each has their own distinct smell. But I won’t kid you when I had this stuff fresh in the back of my garage. Like I opened up a key lime pie bakery. This is the majority of my supply as of right now.
I couldn't wait to try out a few different "abrasion" methods. Coarse-tooth hand saw: OK, but very fine sawdust, and hard to make the most of a block. Ordinary drill bit: Again, very fine pieces and hard to drill holes very close together. Then I remembered that I had a mini Stanley "surform" plane (i.e. the type that has like a lemon zester plate on the bottom rather than a straight-edged blade). Below are the results: I like it!
I guess every time I look at this thread I just end up scratching my head. Why don't y'all just use pine cones? The white pine cones have sap on them and light easy with a single match. I pick them up when dry, throw them in a tub and keep in the wood room. One a fire gets things going in a hurry.
