Phat Wood

[bushwacker bob]

I was in a carpenters workshop yesterday and picked up some off-cuts of pitch pine.The wood looked and smelt very 'fat' with lots of resin despite being 2nd hand decking timber off a ship.I briefly put a flame to a small slither and 'hey presto' had a mini inferno in my hand. I was so impressed with the flamability of this wood that I decided to try and light a fire in the rain with it. Despite wet kindling and no other tinder,I managed to light a fire in a torrential downpour. Q; is this what 'Maya' sticks are made from? I have never used the commercial variety and wondered if anyone can give a difinitive answer

 

[Realgar]

It's either Pino de Ocate or Pino Montezuma, I can't find the botanical names. I bought some sticks as "aromatic barbeque matches".

If anyone knows a source I'd love to get hold of a log sized piece for carving - it's got a weird translucent quality that I rekon might be fun to play with,
Realgar

 

[Paganwolf]

just out of interest, if you see a rotten fallen pine while out, give the old knots/broken branches in the trunk a kick/ or a clump with your axe they will come out the knots are very resinous and the shavings will light easily, they will also burn nicely on your fire and give off a pleasent smelling smoke.

 

[jakunen]

Interesting tip!:super:

 

[Viking]

The pine ruttens from the out side and not from the inside as many other trees. The reasin is the pine tree´s way of stopping it from rutten. So if you find a pine that has started to rotten, the bark has fallen of and its grey an has a strong smell of terpentine then its full of reasin and will make perfect wood for a fire. It´s the same thing with old pine stumps, wich you often can just kick up from the ground these are also full of reasin, some people buy sticks of this and call it maya sticks. But its a lot more fun to pick your own. Tree´s like this is often found in old forests or in mosses. If it has rained for weeks and every little piece of wood you can find is soaking wet this is what you should be looking for. You can even light it with a firesteel if you just scrape some of it first.

Here in sweden wood like this is called "töre".

 

[C_Claycomb]

Different types of pine produce different "grades" of resinous wood. I have yet to find any pine stumps in the UK that come close to having the resin content of the "Georgia Fat Wood Kindling" I bought from Orvis.

Georgia fat wood is the wood of the longleaf pine "Pinus palustris". I haven't been able to pin Maya wood to a particular type of tree, but given that it is sold as it is, I am sure that they only bother to harvest the species that gives the best return.

The closest that I have come to the wood here was the standing stump of a scots pine. It was far from rotten though! All the rotten pine stumps I have dug into (and I have tried a couple dozen) are nothing but rotten pine. :?: :rolmao:

As far as carving goes, I wouldn't have thought it would be all that nice, very splintery, easy to split and the resin would make a sticky mess on tools. I think it would be horrible to sand too!

 

[Gary]

I agree with Chris, I found several stumps just oozing resin in Sweden, one I even processed and brought back as demo kit but in the UK you rarely find a good knot let alone proper Maya stick material.

Maybe scotland, in the Caledonian forests last enclaves, but as for the rest of UK i dont hold out much hope.

 

[den]

The closest that I have come to the wood here was the standing stump of a scots pine. It was far from rotten though!

Are "Georgia Fat Wood Kindling" made from rotten wood?

 

[C_Claycomb]

The point of looking for resinous wood in rotten stumps is that the resin stops that bit of wood from rotting, meanwhile the rest of the stump is kindly falling to bits, making it easier for you to get at the good bits



http://www.orvis.co.uk/store/produc...5975&cat_id=5973&subcat_id=5974&feature_id=17

Great stuff. Beats getting little bundles of Maya sticks!

 

[den]

Has anyone got any photos of Georgia Fat Wood Kindling just to see how good this stuff is?
I thought the wood from stumps of old Scots pine was an excellent source for saturated wood. Though I only found the saturation to be a couple of inch’s deep.


Sorry about the quality of the photos I’m in desperate need of a new camera.

Here are a few bits I’ve chopped off the block. The top left one having the most resin.

Lights a treat.

I got 11mins burn time in total. It was a bit windy in the garden and I had to relight it Twice.

A few more

Cheers

 

[Tvividr]

In the Scandinavian forests you will find lots of it ): And it is not only good for making a firce fire. Old Norwegian logghouses and cabins were build using this wood. In the good old days the builders went to the forrest and cut off the top of select trees (as much as 10 years before the actual building process started !), so that the resin would rise and try to seal the wound - thus impregnating the whole trunk. These buildings could stand for hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years (some of the oldest ones were torn down hundred years ago, so we do not know exactly how old they were) - the old wooden churches (stavkirke = stave church refering to the construction) that are unique to Norway have been standing for hundreds of years due to the good building materials.
An example of these churches can be seen here:

This one was build around 1200. Heddal Stavkirke in Telemark, close to the town Notodden and the Lifjell mountains.

 

[bushwacker bob]

WOW that is one heck of a building!

 

[tomtom]

yeh.. i hope no one holds a match near it..

 

[Tvividr]

yeh.. i hope no one holds a match near it..

During the dry part of the summer you are not even allowed to smoke near these things ):
The oldest one (not torn down 100 yrs ago. I think it was from the end of the Viking Age) was burnt down a couple of yers ago by some devil worshippers

 

[Viking]

Tividr, that was some interesting facts. The danish burnt many of the our churhes in the south but I now that he one in the village I grow up in manage to get away from it and it was all made of wood.

 

[alick]

the old wooden churches (stavkirke = stave church refering to the construction) that are unique to Norway have been standing for hundreds of years due to the good building materials.

I've been to the stavkirke just outside Bergen, I remember it as much smaller than this one in telemark and all black. but still absolutely amazing to visit. You can feel the history oozing from the pores of the wood !

Thanks for the reminder Tvividr, my photos from that trip are transparencies which I haven't looked at for years. :You_Rock_

 

[Tvividr]

I've been to the stavkirke just outside Bergen, I remember it as much smaller than this one in telemark and all black. but still absolutely amazing to visit. You can feel the history oozing from the pores of the wood !

Thanks for the reminder Tvividr, my photos from that trip are transparencies which I haven't looked at for years. :You_Rock_

That's the one they burned down to the ground in 1992 ! (Fantoft Stavkirke, just searched the web for it and found out that it was build in 1150)
It has been restored, or actually a copy has been built.