where do you get your kindling?

Construction scraps and we live on a farm so there's usually always a dead Pine or two around. Cut it up in 6" lengths and split away with a hatchet. My late dad use to go to the woods and find old Pine Knots he called them, hard as rocks when you tried to split them but burned like you threw gas on them.

I split the edges and corners off my larger pieces. Good exercise when there isn't much to do outside. You know what they say, wood warms you more than just when you burn it.

I use a tool called a froe and a club made from a split. it's enjoyable work.

I found a local fence Co. that puts out scraps for free kindling. Only need it during shoulder season on cold strat-ups.

I use splitter scraps

Not really, he's taking some of the fun out of cleaving wood. I don't like using a rope or band. See how he has to keep backing the froe out. That would frustrate me. I like the crack and pop of cleaving with out. I made a video 'cause I'm an old tool geek and I like any reason to use the tools. You can order a froe from Peavey Manufacturing and you take a hatchet and make a club from a split. A whack on the top and then a good yank on the handle and the stuff flies off. It's fun if you like that kind of stuff.

I think I added a video. First time trying to do it thru youtube.

pen said:

Very cool video.

Is your froe the Peavey brand?

Click to expand...

Yup.

How cedar shakes were made at one time. Great tool. I hammered one out for a friend at the forge from a leaf spring.

DTrain said:

I use a tool called a froe and a club made from a split. it's enjoyable work.View attachment 144262

Click to expand...

I've seen those and never knew what they were for! Very cool. Now that I know what it is- I'm sure I'll never see another at a garage sale. Add that to the list of neat wood-heat tools that I need though... :thumbup:

adrpga498 said:

I found a local fence Co. that puts out scraps for free kindling. Only need it during shoulder season on cold strat-ups.

Click to expand...

I work at a fence company and throw away s-loads of scrap. I'm sure any fence co would gladly supply you with scraps.

I fill up a tire with short pine and sass splits and chop away with the fiskars. Do the same thing to make fatwood fom pitchy pieces.Fast half strokes, fun and effective. Looking for a.nice froe head though. Love old wood tools.

We took down a "cedar" tree in our yard that was dead standing. It dried beyond dry. It's like paper it's so light! Now we just use that, it's really easy to split into tiny pieces.

We also have several boxes of scraps from splitting wood. I swept them all up and saved them.

Also we always have a yard full of the stuff from the 50+ trees in our yard. But that gets raked up and hauled off now. I used to go pick that up when we first got here and had to buy wood from others. Now we have learned how to manage our trees properly and probably won't ever have to buy wood again.

Fatwood, splitter trash, resplit some really straight grained stuff using my Estwing Fireside Friend (Love it). We also like newspaper, I think 2 - 3 pages of that twisted with a few small splits really works well.

A Plumb hatchet my Dad got me when I was 12; old ceder phone pole and the chopping block from my grandfathers farm.

Dried palm fronds and dried pine cones together with pieces of dead leylandi work very well for us!

We own quite a bit of land littered with poplar so we cut down quite a bit every spring cut and split it, dry it that make it into kindling as well as regular splits for starting initial fire as the poplar burns fast and real hot.

I use splitter scraps collected all summer, and birch bark. When ever I or my son are in the woods out back, we always come back with pockets or even a bucket of dried hemlock branches. Wood scraps from left over wood working projects get kept in a bucket too. There's always something around to use as kindling. If you were real hard up I'd bet a KD 2X4 would give you weeks worth of kindling. Any little patch of woods near by will have a ton of dead and dry branches you can grab.