fat wood

[Phil Underwood]

anybody ever try this stuff? we tried out for the first time this weekend on our camping trip, it worked great !!!!

Found some more on ebay...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Fire-Starter-Pitch-Woo...1QQcmdZViewItem

[Gina D.]

resins are the key. You can get soaking wet downfall going easy if it's pitchy enuff.

He is selling it cheap, couldn't hurt to try a bundle. Around 5 bones with shipping seems worth the risk

[McClure]

Yup Phil we use pine heart wood all the time in the East Texas Big Thicket. Not much pine around the coastal plains huh?

take care
Blair

[b]

anybody ever try this stuff? we tried out for the first time this weekend on our camping trip, it worked great !!!!

Found some more on ebay...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Fire-Starter-Pitch-Woo...1QQcmdZViewItem

[Mike Watters]

Most all of the campgrounds around here it's illegal to transport firewood around. In our case they're trying to suppress the spread of the Emerald Ash Borer. Might want to take that into account when considering this sort of thing.

We make our own firestarters at home. Just takes some egg cartons (the paper ones, not the plastic ones) and saving up some dryer lint. Only thing that actually needs to be purchased is some wax (home canning supplies), any old candle left-overs works too.

Anyway - cram the lint into the egg carton wells as tight as you can get it - then pour the wax over the lint. Break up the result into single well chunks and you've got decent firestarters.

Course - BBQ lighter fluid works nicely too.

Mike

[Pete Dumbleton]

I don't think pitch pine has much in the way of parasites because of the thick pitch. Steel wool makes a good fire starter and there's no gooey wax involved.

[Byron Kinnaman]

There's lots of information on the web about NOT transporting fire wood. Even with a lot of resin there's still some chance of bugs. A couple years ago I carved a couple bottle stoppers out of Ponderosa Pine. It wasn't very long before there was saw dust around those carvings. I don't know if those would have enough wood to have bugs, but I bet any inspector would consider them as fire wood.

[Mike Watters]

A couple years ago I carved a couple bottle stoppers out of Ponderosa Pine.

I bet any inspector would consider them as fire wood.

Now now... I'm sure your carvings were better than that.

Course if >I< carved them... I could understand the mistake!

Oh... The wax is only gooey during the melting/pouring part. It's no more gooey than a candle after that. The dryer-lint/wax blobs will burn a nice long time and do a pretty decent job of getting fires started. I like the idea that they're mostly made from trash too.

Mike

[james kent]

Mike, that's not TRASH. That's being a camper friendly recycler.

[Byron Kinnaman]

Now now... I'm sure your carvings were better than that.

Course if >I< carved them... I could understand the mistake!

Oh... The wax is only gooey during the melting/pouring part. It's no more gooey than a candle after that. The dryer-lint/wax blobs will burn a nice long time and do a pretty decent job of getting fires started. I like the idea that they're mostly made from trash too.

Mike

It's fun sometimes to take things out of contex isn't it?

[Chris Z]

Phil
We've been using fatwood for years. In fact, Cracker Barrell was selling it a few years ago around Christmas and since they didn't sell it they reduced iot to almost nothing. I bought bags and bags for pennies on the dollar. It is sealed in airtight bag and never thought about bugs. A bag just stays sored in my Casita. Really helps getting a fire going if you need it. I was originally told it was made from a root but maybe an old wive's tale.

[Mike Watters]

It's fun sometimes to take things out of context isn't it?

It's a presidential election year. I think that makes "out of context" clippings officially "in season" doesn't it?

More to the topic:
I've used the fatwood stuff before. I thought it was a little harder to get started than my homemade stuff - but worked fine. My only concern was the legal restrictions to moving wood around. It may very well be that this particular wood isn't going to have anything in it - but IMHO it's not worth trying to argue that with the DNR guy. It's not so much a matter of thinking it could have anything in it - It's just a matter of avoiding the hassles. As an example: For the Emerald Ash Borer problem here - it's really only ASH that's the problem, but they don't allow you to transport in ANY wood (including from the apple tree I cut up myself). I just buy the campground's wood and leave it at that. If I were building bonfires every night I might care more about it - but considering we basically just use it for dogs, smores and conversation it's not a problem.

Mike