Fatwood for Beginners

[Music] one question I get asked all the time from individuals who are just starting out bushcrafting or learning new survival skills is around fad would they always have a hard time finding fat wood and it shouldn't be that hard and I think where that confusion comes in is number one they don't understand what's happening and why the fad wood is developed and a lot of people take it to such an extreme right away with information that it overloads a person and it they almost shut down over it if they just they feel it's too complicated finding fat wood is not complicated so this is what I like to tell individuals number one there's resins in any type of evergreen tree okay so as those Revit resins settle down okay or settle down a dead branch they start to build up so we're looking at branches where they insert to the trunk of the tree or at the base of a downed tree towards the center is where you're gonna find buildup of that resin and that's really what the fat wood is is just the resins that have settled into the wood so that's the first thing second thing is where do we find us in the woods because some individuals say oh I'm out all time I can't find it so the best thing that do that if you're new to this is go out and look for evergreen trees or pine trees or if you want to say Christmas trees in a sense somewhere in a forest that there's large evergreens go and just look for that and that's going to be a great determination of an area that there's possibly fat wood in and then from there take your axe and do a little bit of chopping and cutting and see if you can find anything so I have pine trees and evergreen trees all through this forest where I'm at right now so what I'm gonna do is look for something that's dead I have a dead tree here a dead tree there and this is still a dead standing tree here ok so again I can't really get into the main trunk of this because it's just too big and thick and I don't want to put the time into that but I can get into these dead branches so we're gonna get the camera readjusted and I'm gonna chop into one of these branches and we're gonna take a quick look and see if we find any fat wood here okay so here's what we got going on we're looking at this dead standing tree and that branch did I identified a second ago and we're just gonna cut down a closer we can cut into this trunk the better we just want to be careful with this guys we want to make sure we're not cutting ourselves or injuring ourselves during this process so I can tell you already two chops in that this is absolutely going to be an awesome piece of fat one for sure so I'm just going to take my time because again I want to get down on the inside if you can now look at that you can see all that resin built up in there okay so let's go over to one of our camps process this and I'll show you how you process it further to make fire so we don't need much more than an axe in a knife really to process this out so really all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start out by just giving that a little whack splitting that open probably with my fingers a little bit and it's been pouring down rain here so there's a little bit of moisture now but it's not gonna hurt anything at all guys it's really not so this is what we're looking for we're just looking for all that resin it should when we smell it smell like turpentine that's a good indicator that there's fat wood in there now Pennsylvania thought what is nothing like Georgia South Carolina type fat wood even Florida but what we want to do next is take the back of our knife it has a nice sharp spine on it and we just want to start to create shavings off this now try to keep them in the location that you're scraping into it with emergency scenario but for me I'm not too worried about that right now I have so much of this right here this is gonna work just fine and just keep scraping that see you kind of shavings I'm getting off here that's what you're looking for guys for real you don't want just little shavings I really put a lot of force into that so we have our pile if this was a true situation that I need this fire going with this much fat wood I'm gonna probably double that amount so I always take take my Ferro rod give it one you know just a starter stroke and I say that a lot of people always laugh and I say that but we're really looking when we do this not to get too much in a Farah rod to make ridges so my first ones not gonna be as efficient as my second one because once I scrape it the first time I created two ridges and that Ridge is what I'm gonna scrape off but this might light just with the first one not that one [Music] and there you go so that's it finding fatwood for beginners all the way out to starting a fire it's a very simple process and you can see this is still burning so this really lasts a long time really to be honest with everybody this is my go-to for the most part I always carry fat wood around in my pack with me and if I'm gonna start a fire even just to make a cup of coffee it's usually started with fat wood you could take shavings from there to extend it out even further but you can see this works out really really well so definitely give it a try and if you're a beginner you know just get out there and just do it but find a find somewhere where there's evergreens go through that split some areas out some wood and figure it out you'll get it and join the ranks so this was Dan boy back with coal cracker bushcraft I hope you enjoyed this video and if you haven't already check us out of coal cracker bushcraft comm and until the next video stain woods guys

Channel: Coalcracker Bushcraft

Views: 3,774,567

Rating: 4.8826947 out of 5

Keywords: finding fatwood, emergency fire, survival school, northeastern survival school, survival school in pa

Id: FmQA-ChX4PQ

Length: 6min 0sec (360 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/iismitch55]

TLDW, shavings from a dead standing pine with dried resin wood make a good fire starter.

Worth a watch though

[u/HollowGoob]

This guy was on Townsends, he's pretty damn good at what he does.

[u/Caiur]

I watched this video a few months ago!

Does anyone else get /r/forbiddensnacks vibes from the thumbnail? lol

[u/gwaydms]

If you're in the mountains of the West, and see a lightning-struck evergreen, it may have fatwood. Young bristlecone pines are basically made of it; the heartwood is all deep orange, and the cones are so resinous they're actually sticky. I saw a couple of young bristlecones in Colorado that were splintered open not far below timberline.

[u/borednerd55]

I got some fat wood I can show ya... . . . . . . . .

I'll show myself out

[u/Arcterion]

Came for some laughs, learned something mildly interesting.

[u/VBgamez]

Nothing feels better than finding an entire fallen tree made of fat wood.

[u/iSeize]

dude is militant about his fatwood.

[u/PenchantPoncho]

When is the video for "Becoming a tank for beginners" coming out