How to Find and Use Fatwood

hi I'm John Newton aka snap-on John 100 and you are watching wilderness self-reliance what I'm going to be doing today is showing you how I start a fire using fat wood I'm going to show you how I find it how I process it and start lighted up with a Ferro rod this would be simulating if conditions were sopping wet and everything was all wet because fat wood is waterproof it's obviously it's not wet out today but I won't be using any other tinder sources to make it affair all right stay with me I'm in a beautiful deciduous forest and what I'm going to be looking for are dead pine trees okay so follow along with me you can tell a dead pine tree or spruce by all of the branches come off almost like a spoke at the same spot you could almost call them a node and so here's one right down here this is one and if you'll notice there's branches here they're going all the way around the trunk up here well right in here there are the same thing same thing up here so it makes it fairly easy to identify them since we're going to go up here to a dead one and we're going to try to as quietly as possible sawed off a branch when a branch falls off or breaks off the tree pumps resin into the branch to seal it off so that insects can't get in there so this is how I find in upstate New York this is how I find fatwood I'm not very sister haven't been very successful looking in some but I've been fairly successful in doing it this way but it depends on how warm the area is because in colder climates I found it doesn't seem to be as good so this spot is fairly mild and we'll see if we can get some out of this one and I also got some while I was hiking in so I wouldn't be spinning too much time sawing okay let me set the camera up and we'll get started as you can see this is a tree I've used before okay see how you can tell that's really red and solid and heavy and look how dead this tree is this thing has really been here for a long time okay dry old dry rotted so if if I was not pretending it's been raining forever I would use this punk wood right here to help me with my fire but since I'm pretending everything is all wet I can't use that one and when you cut it you can actually see the sawdust is bright white it's like a creamy yellow color and it's sort of sticky see that it's got resonant okay I've collected three here and I got a couple more larger ones that were on really rotted trees that where I one of them I actually just pull out okay I think you can see me all right here are the pine nuts will call them with their little cut off branch of the pine the three I got here's one that I pulled out this is so rotted it just pulled out but you see how solid that is still and then I cut this large one off see the resin in there so I will process a couple of these on camera and then I'll process the rest off camera so it won't take so long so I'm trying to make this short I'm going to be using a bark river Bravo one with a modified hump I took that hump off myself so it fit in my leather sheet so just baton this down just like you would normally anything else and because it's full of resin it tends to pop right open after a while you can just do with your hand put this on some piece of bark so I don't lose them see how full of resin those are and the ends of this is just rotted because the resin only goes so far up or so far out the break so where the resin beyond the resonance is where it rots look at that piece this piece I'm going to cut these off oh let me show you to find out if it has resin in it and if you don't have a saw just start carving on it see that color that instantly shows you it's good I'm just wearing my gloves also for safety cut that one off I'm going to cut off the end of this one to this one you can keep these little rotted pieces because they'll have enough in there residual that they should burn okay especially once you get the fire started okay so both of those didn't have anything in them so I'll stick those over here see if this is small enough I can use my yeah I guess you can do the whole thing for hand now what's that okay all right now what you want to do trying to do it on a surface if you can I'll just put right here what I'm going to do now is I'm going to one switch knives and I'm going to process this switching knives because I got this today it's a gso 3.5 with orange g10 scales Kydex sheath it's got a thing on the back i still pervert anglers so this one will be a backpacking knife three and a half inch or so a CPM 3v steel 1/8 inch thick blade it's about an inch tall you've got a spear point and it's also got a Ferro notch cut in the top of it and a hidden lanyard hole with an exposed tang what we want to do see if I can get this camera closer right here as we want to shave very thin curls I hope they're showing up they're extremely thin it is curling up really nicely I love gso knives by their five survived knives they're designed and made by guy named guy Seifert no guy ciphered keep mispronouncing his name but the his website survived knives calm see smollett are you're trying to create surface area because this stuff is flammable even when wet so takes a spark pretty handily but it's nicer if it's got a lot of surface area to catch all right I'm using I'm using some grapevine bark just to line this hole to keep the dampness off away from the fire and then my hole is small because I'm basically just showing you how to start a fire here I'm not going to make a big fire I'm just going to start a little tiny fire and then put it out but the point of this is showing you how I start my fire if it's wet and I have to use if I have no material at all now I can start off how I start a fire with fat wood so what I'm going to do is I'm going to strike it on the wall here and then just transfer it over here and then put the other with it I have to do this left-handed this there we go closer there we have it can make this the sticks thinner but since they're so flammable it doesn't really matter now I've got this in such a hole that this not hardly getting any oxygen at all as you can see I've got a log here and it's down low but you see how easily that burns so there you have it this is how I start a fire using fat wood that's how I find fat wood and this is how I start a fire with it if conditions are all sopping wet hope you enjoyed this little short video and please hit the light thumbs up button the like and subscribe if you have it and I love getting your comments before I close out another thing I'll use is I carry a pencil sharpener with me and if I wanted finer shavings I'd split those down to where they fit in here and then I would just make a big one down here sits a small one and as you turn it you can make shavings so you can make fat wood shavings so that's another way of making tiny you can also use that on little small sticks till we meet again god bless

Channel: snaponjohn100

Views: 169,662

Rating: 4.8192806 out of 5

Keywords: Fatwood, bushcraft, woodmanship, knives, ray mears, wilderness survival, survival knives, backpacking, camping, hammocks, guns, john newton, survive knives, primitive fire, How to Find and Use Fatwood

Id: VmPEd7G63mo

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 20 2014