Harvesting fatwood/pitchwood?

clich

clich

Joined
Apr 19, 2011
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What are some signs to look for in downed pines that may have some good fatwood inside? I live in eastern pa and never used the stuff before a BF friend sent me some as a bonus for buying a knife. Now I LOVE it as tinder but don't know how or where to find it. Basic research says down pines by scars and knots but everything I find and cut open doesn't have anything that seems resin impregnated, just nice dry wood. Anyone got any tips? I also cut down a pine at work that was dead for about 6 months and took alot of the wood and the roots and still nothing that looked like a good tinder other than it being dry. I'm at a loss for ideas since I don't really know too much about it and usually use dried plants as tinder. Any help would be great. Thanks
 
Find some toppled pine, look for it's stump. if the stump is punky break it apart, if you find a hard section in the punk more than likely you've found pitch wood.

Downed pine works too, a 2' diameter tree can become a 4" diameter chunk of pitch wood.

Standing or downed pine, look for branches that haven't rotted for about 12" from the trunk.

See a stump in the woods, kick it.

If you like digging and cutting in the woods then harvesting it yourself is fine, if you just want fatwood, go to wal-mart.

Oh, best tip I can give you.... take a saw, chopping fatwood is a great workout, but if it's about harvesting, a saw will be much more useful and if you like hiking with weight, bring a good sack or backpack, in one trip you can gather enough for a lifetime of emergency use or just enough for a fatwood fire in your back yard.

the stump in your avatar, it kinda looks like fatwood with the punk knocked off.
 
Skimos was just about perfect.

If there's anything to add, I'm pretty sure any coniferous tree can be harvested. Not just pine.
 
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Mistwalker has a near perfect thread on this....Maybe somebody can do the search and put a link to it.
 
If you really can't find any, just go to your hardware store or supermarket and look for bags of fatwood kindling. Here in CA, they come in 3 pound bags for about $5.
 
I would like to harvest it on my own. mainly for my own sense of accomplishment and just to know what to look for. Really strange timing a huge ponderosa pine fell on the property next to my work and i could see from 50 yards away the bright gooey orange heart. I think ill go get some tomorrow. Funny how things like this just drop from the sky. Although i will need to get into the woods and really find some
 
Another place to find it if your in an area that has a lot of pines is in the handcut fenceposts of old, broken down field fence. Many homesteaders would cut their own fence posts and pine would often be the source for line posts (most corner posts were larger hardwood). I know I don't need to say to make sure the fence is truly abandoned before you butcher one of the downed posts for fatwood, lol.
 
The dead lower limbs of live pine trees often contain fatwood close to the trunk, the lower on the trunk they are the better it seems.
 
If you live int he mountains and hemlock trees grow in your area you also don't want to confuse Hemlock knots with pine knots and just try to split them. Hemlock knots are extremely hard and have been known to kill knives. I'm doing some work in an area loaded with hemlock, I'll get some shots of hemlock and fatwood knots both tomorrow, if I can remember, to show the similarities and the differences.
 
I got a couple acres of pine and I'm going to be up there this weekend. Good timing on this thread; gonna see what I can come up with.
 
Stumps of pines that have been cut down will often have good fatwood, look for sap oozing out of the cut wood. And if you see a pine that has been toppled by wind or erosion, exposing the roots, check out the roots right at the base of the trunk. The best fatwood I have ever found was in the roots of a toppled ponderosa.

Here's a typical fatwood-yielding ponderosa stump
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And some good stuff
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You have a ponderosa next to work? I wonder who planted it, it is not native to PA. In that area, you will find eastern white pine, pitch pine, virginia pine, table mountain pine, and red pine. Eastern White and Pitch pines are the most common pines in eastern PA. Since pitch pine has been a historical source of pitch and resin, I would look for them.
 
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Look for stumps with mostly rotten wood piled up around the base. Then look for protrusions or "fingers" sticking up. Like this pic here the BK2 is sticking in the Pitchwood on this stump, there's a couple of fingers to the right and left of the knife that's pitchwood too. I wonder why certain parts have rotted away and some haven't, resin, thats why.


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Very good info guys thanks. As far as the ponderosa that was merely my assumption based on the size and looks. I don't not know much about tree identification so I can certainly be way off. Here's a pic of the stump next to a coworker that's 6'3".

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I know you're looking at wild places to find pitchwood but I've also had fair luck with pallets. I work in shipping and receiving and some of the pallets that come in have knots with pitch wood in them.
 
Was out today and found several downed trees that were almost entirely fatwood.
 
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