Bushcraft Basics Ep19: Finding Fatwood Tinder

Description

In this episode of bushcraft basics we look at finding fatwood as a Tinder in a coniferous woodland to help us make a fire. Fire lighting can be very challenging in the wilderness but understanding where to find reliable tinder's like fatwood will help you travel light and become very proficient with your tools.

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Related Videos:

Fatwood & Feathers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS5IF8wcVPs

Fatwood Pine Shoulders - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-SW9HW0OFA

Fatwood Heart Roots - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNxD5fJnOac

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Video Transcription

hi there guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and welcome to another episode of bushcraft basics in the last two episodes of bushcraft basics we started to look into fire lighting skills and we had a look at the ferrocerium rod specifically a couple of the different composites you can find out there the techniques that go well with them and we had a brief look at some of the Tinder's that you can find typically in the northern hemisphere how they operate in different weather conditions and some of the techniques that go with them we're in a coniferous woodlands a and this woodland stretches on for quite a distance and we have a lot of conifers here really blocking out the sunlight there's not a lot of resources on the ground and that's fairly typical for a coniferous woodlands and sometimes when you're in coniferous woodlands you can get a little bit of a feeling that they're quite sparse of resources but that's quite the opposite really there's actually a lot of resources around here that you can use they're fantastic for shelter building and there's a lot of resources for fire lighting which is what we're going to start to explore today we're actually going to go out in the field and the next few episodes start to gather resources and put them away for when we start to actually make a fire and one of the great resources that you can find in coniferous woodlands like this it's fat wood and it's a term used a lot in bushcraft and fat Wood is basically wood infused with resin and because conifers are full of resin that's very flammable and it's been used as a resource for thousands of years really it's very very useful you can often find downed trees in woodlands like this that Harbor a lot of fat wood and even stumps as well and if you look on the ground around me you'll see a lot of downed trees in this woodland young and old and they have branches and limbs poking out of them they've dried out and those limbs can Harbor a lot of fat wood so that's really what I keep my eyes peeled for I'm walking through woodlands like this and I need to make a fire and I've really just got the tools on my belt and in my pack and no resources with me so let's take a look around and have a look at what we can find so just a short walk from where we were a moment ago and we found a downed spruce tree and this one's been down for some time it's not particularly old but it's really going to be ideal for what we're looking for today at first glance or from touching it the wood is saturated it's really wet and you can pick it out with your fingers very easily and that's what's referred to as punk wood and wood is so rotten it's very punky like polystyrene it can be pulled apart that's not particularly a problem with this resource or what we need to gather today or even the method in which we need to make a fire with this actual resource itself if you're familiar with the British Isles it rains here for almost the larger percentage of the year and if you can't make a fire and wet weather then really you can't make a fire at all in this country if you live here and you practice bushcraft skills then making a fire in the rain will be second nature tea and you should be able to operate with the resources around you quite easily and with this particular resource the wetter are more rotten the piece of wood the better when it comes to gathering it and there's some good logic behind that the fat wood itself in the core of the wood will keep out all of the moisture and it won't rot and when you take it out it will be like a stabilized piece of wood that's been filled with glue and it won't be rotten at all and because of that you want the wood around it to be as easy as possible to remove so you can get to that resource so when a tree like this has been weathered very quickly by torrential rain over many many months it means that you can just pick away the wood very easily and take out that fat wood core with minimal effort and the minimal use of your tools if any of you are familiar with rotten trunks in the ground in very torrential environments when you're looking for fat wood you can literally just pull the wood away with your hands and chlorite the piece of fat wood or roots that you're looking for it's infused with it with zero effort at all there is in a drier climate the wood is quite seasoned you'll need to get your oxide then you need to hack against it or cut it with a saw so what weather can work in your favor with this method of gathering with the resource and even with the fire lighting as well because it is a resource designed to be used in wet weather obviously in dry weather it's much easier but let's have a look at this branch here and see whether we can get some fat wood out of it on this particular limb here the area in which there will be the most fat wood is closest to the actual trunk and that's the case for most limbs you generally get a buildup there at that join and if you take that as close so the actual trunk is possible you'll maximize on the resource you're looking for we can take this in a number of ways if it was rotten enough we could kick it off with our feet and it often breaks out in like almost I could join just here or we can get a saw or an axe and cut it and that's what I'm going to do and has gone incredibly strong smell and a very very deep color deep red and that's really a great sign if you cut a limb off and it looks like that you are out exploring the wilderness and you're traveling and you're looking for a reliable tinder take advantage of the entire tree have a look at all the limbs and gather some material because you can always keep it for later on for future trips or expeditions it's some a really good resource for wet or dry weather if it works in wet weather it works in dry weather and that's very typical of all fire lighting techniques so what we're going to do with this now is actually cut it just here because the fat wood won't really be particularly good further up the trunk or up the limb sorry so we'll cut it there we'll take about a foot away and we'll start processing down taking the bark off taking away the actual wet material on the outside and just leaving the hard fat wood but if you do take a limb off and it's very white and there's only a tiny red dot in the center the lighter the color the less fat wood you have basically and you want to move on to another limb because the resin content won't be particularly high especially in the damp when that wood will actually take on moisture but let's have a look at this limb that's looking pretty good

I think what we're going to do now is split it in half and then quarter it so we actually have a decent corner to scrape the back of our knife on and it will refine the wood a bit more get rid of the damper outside and you can get to the dry core where the best fat wood will be so now that we've split these stain the smile becomes even stronger and you get to the dry resinous wood in the core which is quite red and these can be put in your pack and used at any point but if we just take the bass one which is this one here this is the raddest we're just going to scrape it with the back of our knife into a pile on top of this fallen tree here I'm just going to demonstrate to you how useful this actually is even after months and months of rain we've just come out here found a dead tree taking a limb straight off and it can be used as a resource with a ferrocerium rod very easily once you've got a small pile just like that you can take your Ferro rod this is a hard composite as we talked about so technique differs slightly drive some sparks is and you have a fire and then other material around it such as a fire feather for example would then turn that into a fire even small twigs you may ask why we're not actually making a fire at this point in the training series and that's because there are many other dynamics that come into play we're actually building a proper fire for example the type of environment you're in Reno coniferous woodlands disturb ill the fire in this environment than it is in a deciduous environment or if it's very windy and dry in a deciduous environment with a lot of leaf litter that is an absolute hazard as well and it can you can very easily start a ground fire quite quickly in that respect so those are things were going to come to later down the line we're really just building up a very strong background knowledge at the moment so when we actually come to build a fire you understand all the finer points of what's involved why it might be successful what weather conditions you're in and you can put all of these things into practice when you actually build one but this is just really a very simple resource fatwood is very easy to find even in the worst of conditions and it can be really the saving grace of making a fire if the weather isn't particularly good for you but there are many ways of gathering it you can actually dig down into the rotten trunks and pull out the SAP roots of the actual tree which is a large core of fat wood and that still uses a commodity in different parts of the world today if you look at the description below this video you'll see three other do zon fatwood which I urge you to watch if you're interested in fatwood we won't be covering them in that much detail in the bushcraft basic series this is more of an overview and I have other videos to back that up and there's no point recovering that kind of information so do check the description if you're interested in other fatwood videos in the next week's video we will be looking at other resources we actually cover feathering is a technique because it can greatly assist fatwood and other Tinder's as well if you need to feather so we'll talk all about that in the next episode thanks again for watching guys please see the links in the description I'll see you very soon in another video take care thanks again you