300 year old firestarters.....

got home this afternoon and first thing I did was go down back to where I cut those ancient barn beams up last evening for my standoffs in the living room hearth and clean up the scrap parts of that beam. I noticed that the core of the wood (which would have been the beginnings of that tree around 300 years ago) was totally crystallized with pitch. So I took the maul and removed the outer layer of wood to get to the heartwood, and used the hatchet to 'sliver' up the heartwood. That stuff lights with a match and it is unreal how it takes off! They call that core stuff 'fatwood', and I now have a 40lb box of it. Neat to think of all that potential energy that has been 'corked' up in the heart of that beam for several centuries.......

only took 15 minutes to sliver up several pieces of that heartwood. I still have to cut them in half, these should last me several years. I never did get to make my toilet paper tube/noodle firestarters yet. I'll do it sometime, but I really don't need them now!

JOHN BOY said:

Thats cool ! Scotty what type of wood species do you think it is ?

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It looks to be red pine or pitch pine. The sapwood is a pinkish red and very tight grained, and the heartwood is super pungent, even after being dead and part of a barn since 1868........lots of crystallized pitch, wood sure looks like a species of pitch pine to me.