Big W fatwood

[Wave Man]

A member on my Facebook group put me on to this, Big W sells fatwood, so when I was in there today I decided to check it out, and this is what I bought. One box of fatwood.

It's all pretty good grade (B+ overall) though I thought it was fairly expensive ($10 a box) considering how much I burn off on a regular basis these days fooling around with my firecraft.

But if you can't harvest it yourself I suppose it is an option.

I was a little disappointed that it wasn't vac-sealed. This fatwood is harvested in Honduras.

I had to laugh, on the box it said to use two sticks to light a fire, IMO if you have to use two sticks of fatwood (of this size) to light a fire you don't know what you are doing and your firecraft is sorely lacking. I am going to do some testing and see.

the box emptied out

and the best bits, all of these are pretty well full of resin, the rest of the sticks are not as good as these few however.

 

[Askew]

I saw this the other day but didn't have time to take a closer look. Good to know it's decent.

 

[Wave Man]

and a short review/burn test

 

[barra650]

A spark from steel and flint to punkwood then flame to fatwood . I like that .

 

[WanderOn]

A member on my Facebook group put me on to this, Big W sells fatwood, so when I was in there today I decided to check it out, and this is what I bought. One box of fatwood.

It's all pretty good grade (B+ overall) though I thought it was fairly expensive ($10 a box) considering how much I burn off on a regular basis these days fooling around with my firecraft.

But if you can't harvest it yourself I suppose it is an option.

I was a little disappointed that it wasn't vac-sealed. This fatwood is harvested in Honduras.

I had to laugh, on the box it said to use two sticks to light a fire, IMO if you have to use two sticks of fatwood (of this size) to light a fire you don't know what you are doing and your firecraft is sorely lacking. I am going to do some testing and see.

the box emptied out

and the best bits, all of these are pretty well full of resin, the rest of the sticks are not as good as these few however.

Thanks Waveman.
You’re bringing out my childhood pyro tendencies.
Been great to learn some basic fire craft with my daughter.
Will pick up some to try.

 

[Wave Man]

A spark from steel and flint to punkwood then flame to fatwood . I like that .

the other way to do it with flint and steel is (and I've shown it before) is to use char cloth, using the ember transfer method.

Cut up a pile of fatwood, get an ember going on char cloth and then blow that ember onto the fatwood.

 

[Wave Man]

I do have to wonder with all the pine forests we have here just north of Brisbane why they can't source fatwood from Australia.

 

[WanderOn]

Couldn’t help myself.

 

[Wave Man]

Couldn’t help myself.

look forward to hearing your thought's on it mate, just to see another perspective.

Thinking about this, this is giving everyone access to fatwood, which is only a good thing, I know lots of suburbanites don't normally get the chance to fool around with fatwood or have the opportunity to harvest it, so I am glad the likes of Big W is selling fatwood.

 

[WanderOn]

I do have to wonder with all the pine forests we have here just north of Brisbane why they can't source fatwood from Australia.

Was thinking about this today.
I think Australian labour costs would be prohibitive. I don’t know how labour intensive harvesting but a sale price of $10 doesn’t leave a lot of fat.
If cost to produce was say $5 a box you would have to be turning over a decent volume.
It maybe viable but possibly not very lucrative?

 

[Wave Man]

cost would have to be it mate, like everything.

 

[WanderOn]

Had a bit of a play today. Shaved off a small amount of fatwood. Took me 4 goes to get it to light with ferro rod.
I was amazed how well it burnt. There was a lot of resin in the piece I used. The small amount I used would have been ample to build a fire with. Burnt for over a minute before I put it out as it was starting to die down.
Left a nice waxy mess on my welding bench.
I’ll get some photos of the rest of the box soon. Randomly picked that piece in the picture

 

[Wave Man]

thanks mate, it's good to get another perspective and multiple data points. That's a great burn.

Don't breathe in that black smoke, its noxious.

A good indication of the quality of the fatwood is the amount of black smoke it produces, the more black smoke the more resin the fatwood has in it.

 

[Wave Man]

more fatwood testing

 

[Wave Man]

a follow up on Big W fatwood

 

[Wave Man]

Bunnings fatwood

I was in Bunnings today and despite them not advertising fatwood on their website I did find bags of fatwood for sale, a lot better value too than from Big-W boxes of fatwood, 1.8kg (so easily twice as much) bag for $13.98, I bought a bag for evaluation purposes, burn tests to follow.

Before anyone asks Product of Honduras and looking through the plastic bag (which is a better package option then the Big-W stuff though it does have holes in it so still not ideal, lots of quality pieces in there.

 

[Wave Man]

Bunnings fatwood burn test

 

[Wave Man]

burn testing one stick just to see how long it would go for