Fatwood haul

Went out at 0300 hours and hit the woods. Had coffee at first light (around 0345 hours) and then did a walkabout for a bit. Tripped over what i thought was a rotten log, only to discover a massive plank of premium douglas fir fatwood. The stuff pictured is 30lbs of fatwood from the much larger piece. Due to limited pack space and the almost 200lb weight of the entire fatwood slab, I could only haul out this small amount.

had i been able to haul out the whole slab, and if i had a thickness planer, I would have been able to plane down the entire log into a 2" x 8" x 10 foot long plank of fatwood. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />















still processing this down to usable pieces (no moss, outer wood). Haven't decided if i'll leave the big piece as one slab or slice it down to smaller pieces.

Going to be a good fire tonight with all the scrap.

i'm getting a bit woozy from the fatwood smell.

Decided to process the fatwood in the GF's kitchen. This of course means using the dining table and the good towels.

getting ready for the big slab, got WD40 to keep the saw lubricated and running smoothly (anti-stiction), got ziplocs to put the processed pieces into, got some beers left to keep me well lubricated, bunch of knives for skinning out the fatwood and a saw for cutting the fatwood bones.



First we start by de-hairing the fatwood, using a knife to scrape it:


then we split the fatwood carcass with a large butcher knife, in this case a SY SOD: (in the background, Fatwood The Cat is eagerly sniffing the carcass)




then we section the piece



the sectioned piece, 6lbs of Grade A premium fatwood

next we process into small pieces, using the saw:







each one of these pieces will yield 6 x 1" x 1" x 6" long pieces of fatwood.


and last we bag and tag!

That is quite a haul Brother!! You are the fatwood king!!

I'm jealous. No fatwood in these parts, unless there's some unique species of fatwood producing oak around here.

When Fatwood has dried out (say you buy some from Lowes) is it still just as usable as the fresh "I GOT IT MYSELF" stuff?

Thats a nice haul of fatwood. That grade A premium fatwood looks really rich.

yes its just as usable! even more so i say......you can scrape a piece with your knife and make extremely fine dust/shavings that will ignite with only sparks or a magnifying glass spot

Ok Thanks Bushy. That is one thing that has kept me from buying some. We don't got many evergreen type trees here in my area.

Sweet find...

Nice haul,diggin the avatar too.Good to see it/him back.

Oh darn,There you go exceeding your bandwidth again.