There's no question that old conifer stumps produce the best fatwood, but even a living tree will push resinous sap toward any injury. When a branch breaks off or is cut, resin will fill (and eventually ooze out of) the wound. The photo at right shows one of our backyard pines where I removed a three-inch limb at the trunk last month.In my experience, the most convenient source of utility-grade fatwood is the stubs of lower branches. In urban settings, thanks to tidy homeowners and the ubiquitous ornamental pine, it's easy to find.
This morning I used the saw blade of my Victorinox Farmer to harvest one such thumb-sized stub. My first clue that it contained a fair bit of resin was the chalky buildup at the end. The wood was relatively hard, too, and it didn't yield easily to the saw, another sign that I'd made a good choice.Once I'd sawed the stub from the trunk, I put the freshly cut end to my nose -- a strong whiff of turpentine confirmed the presence of turpene, the volatile compound that makes fatwood burn so well.
Next, using the knife blade as a wedge and a stick as a baton, I split the stub a couple of times to expose "the good stuff." Batoning a folding knife can put a lot of stress on the pivot and backspring, by the way, so I didn't open the blade completely to its "locked" position.
To liberate the best fatwood in this particular piece, I looked for sticky, dark-orange veins of concentrated resin. (Click on the photo above to see what I was after.) The resulting sticks will be shaved into curls or scraped into powder for starting our next backyard fire.
Did I mention that fatwood will burn even when it's wet?
