Lighter wood or starter wood

[om21braz]

Used to be around here, folks would get scraps from the furniture factories to use as kindling. Very dry and good starter - although not as good as "fatwood".

 

[wngsprd]

Around here we've always called it lightwood. I find the stumps that are left many years after a pine forest has been harvested. By then everything but the lightwood has rotted away and they are easier to pull from the ground. I don 't split the stumps until ready to use because it seems they do dry a little bit.

 

[dmccarty]

Where we hunt is an old turpentine farm, and the trees were havested above the slash. We had more fat lighter to burn than you could imagine, but somebody went in with a trackhoe and dug all the stumps up and hauled them off. Heard they used that wood in the production of Nitro, but never checked to confirm. ..

My father has said the same thing. He was in a hunt club in NW FLA on timber company land. He said that they would put the stumps in train cars and haul them off to be used in explosives.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

Used to be around here, folks would get scraps from the furniture factories to use as kindling. Very dry and good starter - although not as good as "fatwood".

Years ago when we were looking to buy land, we looked at a property with an outdoor wood burner. They had a big pile of oak that was scrap from a mill. The oak was at least 6x6 and maybe 18" long. I THINK they were from a pallet mill. Years after seeing that house I saw a sign up in the farm store selling a single axle dump truck load pretty cheap.

Later,
Dan

 

[lakngulf]

We have always called it "Fat Lighter". The resin from the pine trees accumulates in the stumps. In earlier days, the pioneers made turpentine from pine tree resin or pine tar. I saw "Fat Lighter" for sale in a catalog once. I think it was the Orvis catalog. It was sold in various size bundles. I do recall that it was quite expensive.

+1 That is what we always called it, 'cept where I grew up it was always pronounced with at d at the end. Fat Lighterd

 

[bironacad]

Interesting stuff, someone said short leaf pines? Can anyone be more specific as to the type of pine that is best. On my property I have: Jack Pine, Spruce, some Balsam, Tamarac, and cedar. Oh ya and some nice white pine. I made some shelves out of yellow pine and the veins of harden material were very hard and the scraps burned as described. Interesting thread.

 

[creekbend]

+1 That is what we always called it, 'cept where I grew up it was always pronounced with at d at the end. Fat Lighterd

That is exactly the way I grew up pronouncing it. At the time of my post, I didn't realize that there were other TBN members that would associate with that pronounciation.

 

[chucko]

back in the day (way before my time) they would milk the pine trees kind of like you would a maple and use the sap to make turpentine(sp?) I also head back in the civil war they would use it somehow to make an explosive

 

[sandman2234]

Because of the fine northern folks be less aware of this interesting piece of natural occuring wood starter, I wonder if this is common to the Southern Yellow Pine, or if it is just something caused by our longer summers, shorter winters or something else? I grew up with it around here, and have used it as a fire starter for years. I have several pine stumps out back that are lighter knots. Heck, I have two tractor tires out there that ran over a stump already rotted up at the church where I used to mow, where the center heart was lighter knot and it acted as a spear slicing my tire sidewall. Needless to say, it is rather common around here. My neighbors barn was built out of heart pine wood, which is where lighter comes from and when it caught fire, there was no way you were going to be able to put it out.
One Thanksgiving weekend we went hunting and it started raining and rained the whole weekend. Everything was wet and the only thing that would burn was lighter knot. We burned nothing but lighter knot all weekend just to be able to dry out when we came in from the woods.
David from jax

 

[KentT]

Growing up in the south, and now living in the north (not much longer, I hope), IMO the biggest difference geographically is the species of local conifer and the amount of resin they produce...

For example, white pine is a softer pine, lighter pine, with far fewer large knots (typically) than older southern yellow pine. It doesn't produce nearly the same volume of resin in comparison.

Up north, the most likely candidates for "fat wood" would be jack pine, or if the upper midwest, the red pine...

Pines, in general, would be more resinous than the other conifers -- hemlock, spruce, etc.

It's the resin combined with the denser wood of the knot or stump root that makes the difference...