Finding Fatwood

Fire is one of if not the most important tools in the outdoors. It can keep you warm, cook your food, purify water, signal for help, and help you feel more secure in a stressful situation.

Finding the right natural materials to start a fire in adverse conditions can be a little difficult. One of the best, in my opinion, is fatwood. Fatwood is also known as lighter wood, pine knot, lighter knot, or heart pine. Fatwood is the resinous remains of a pine tree that has died. When a pine tree dies, either upright or fallen, the sap settles into the heartwood of the branches and trunk. As the tree rots the sap hardens into resin soaked wood, this is the fatwood. The best spots to find it is where the branches attach to the trunk or the roots if the tree remained standing for a while.

Fatwood can be lit easily, even in wet conditions, with a lighter, match, or ferro rod. I carry a piece of it in all my camping and survival kits.

***Before harvesting anything from the wild get the landowner's permission and never harvest from public lands or parks.***

Step 1: Find a Dead Pine Tree

Pine trees are the only ones where I have been able to find any fatwood. Ceder trees might produce some but I have yet to find any.

The pine tree needs to be dead and mostly rotten. I have had the best luck from trees that were fallen. The stump can also produce fatwood in or near the roots.

Step 2: Locate Branches

Locate where the larger branches attached to the trunk of the tree. There will most likely be the remains of branches protruding a few inches from the trunk. I use a hatchet to knock and chop away all the soft, rotten wood. Find the hard heart wood at the joints of branches and trunk.

Step 3: Cut Out the Pine Knots

Cut out a few of the knots. To find out if you have any fatwood cut into the hard core, if it looks shiny and you get a strong pine odor you have found fatwood. These knots will still have a lot of rotten wood on them and will need to be processed.

Step 4: Remove Rotten Wood

I begin trimming with my hatchet and then follow up with my knife. You will remove a lot of undesirable material before you are down to just the fatwood.

Step 5: Trim and Keep

My final step is to reduce the good fatwood into pieces that are easy to carry. I will trim off everything but the best until they look the the pictures above.

There you go. Just shave or scrape off a fair amount and it will light easily with just a spark. You can shave off larger slivers to add on top to increase the flames until your marginal fire wood can light, or in severe situations you can split it down into small sticks and use them, along with the shavings and scrapings, to get a good fire going.

Comments

[PogueMahone1775]

Good info! Not only do you save money, you're breaking down deadwood and returning it to the earth quicker.

[Da Big Bad Wolve]

True lighter can't be broken down like other trees it stays crystals from the lighting da hit it pine that's a live and dies by itself yes that will breaking down to feeded new life this guy's above I wanna know where he got his informations from probably someone's never seen true lighter knots and fatback lighter knots kindly before in his whole life time and cedar isn't a pine tree it may looking like one but it ain't one that's a much more expensive woods checking in the lumber yards or hardware stores you'll be paying a higher prices for cedar than pine because it's not pine wood

[Ashly Cheek]

Can i put fatwood/pine wood that I found myself in my fish tank?

[Da Big Bad Wolve]

If it true lighter knots and fatback lighter knots kindly it will killing all of your fish's it's poison to them because of the traces of turpentine in it it's not like drift wood or oak or dogwood or ash

[MMForge]

I am not sure if the resins from the wood could leech out into the water. I would not risk it with out a lot more research.

[kegcork50 ko]

I have more than a hundred pounds of Fat wood which I found in some 160+ year old reclaimed Pine that I purchased, and would like to sell it online to Campers & such. What price would be reasonable?

[Da Big Bad Wolve]

You can selling it to people using old wood burning heaters and stoves depends on how rich it is you could taking it to Texas and making twice as much off of it or finding someone that using the wood heater or wood stove lots of people in the south still until this day uses them

[Da Big Bad Wolve]

The true facts lighter knots doesn't come from a dead pines once they die like any other tree it will breaking down .... True lighter knots aka fatback lighter knots comes from a pines tree been hit by lightning it crystals afterwards how you can only getting lighter knots or fatback lighter knots and kindly theses fools saying it dies and becomes lighter knots and fatback lighter knots kindly going back to schools anyone here in Alabama can telling you the true ways true lighter knots and fatback lighter knots kindly came about you done believe me finding a live pine tree next storms putting a metal rod close to the top of it and when the lighting hits it watching what happened to the pine tree it crystals it to becoming what we calling true lighter knots and fatback lighter knots kindly and don't be no where close to it during that time it's very dangerous I'm giving you a explainable how true lighter knots and fatback lighter knots kindly came about treated pine can be used as lighter knots and for cedar no one uses it for lighter knots and fatback lighter knots kindly because that tree isn't a true pine tree you making different things from it's to making a lots of cash money's you can't using pine and saying it's cedar when it's not cedar has a totally different smells than a pine dies a pine tree has turpentine in it that's where turpentine comes from now does anyone wanna challenging me on this plus all you can finding of true lighter knots and fatback lighter knots kindly taking it to Texas and making a killing from it's like liquid gold's there they can't finding it

[rimar2000]

Very intereseting and useful to know this. Thanks for sharing it.