My mini mill

[florida]

I don't have the resources or equipment to run a big mill but I get my jollies with my small operation and really enjoy myself. Today I went to the woods and brought back 4 nice 12" logs 6 inches long and some limb wood. I got right to work with my single tooth blade and I no time had the jackets off and was making boards. My finished lumber pile is a mess and I'm wondering about a mini 4 sided plane.



 

 

 my mini mill

 

[doc henderson]

very nice, what kind of wood.  I see it is stickered for air drying.  what is your beginning moisture content?  

[thecfarm]

fatwood?
Stickering lumber that way is not good!!!

[Magicman]

I enjoy splitting and smelling fat lighter.  ;D

[Southside]

There is a market for such craftsmanship.

https://youtu.be/TBb9O-aW4zI

[florida]

Lighter pine or fat wood. I try to keep it on stickers for at least 10 seconds! Lol! It has no moisture content and will burn after a week in a bucket of water. Used to be I'd give it as Christmas presents but no one has fireplace anymore so I just do it for fun.our weather is so nice now just sitting out under the trees splitting g lighter is a lot of fun.
This old longleaf pine came down during Ian right across a buggy trail so my grandson and I cut it out and took it home.

 

  

[barbender]

Southside, that kind of premium crafted firewood is exactly the market I am targeting😂

[kelLOGg]

fatwood?
Stickering lumber that way is not good!!!

That's right. It's gonna warp. 😊and who wants warped kindling?

[Cedarman]

Florida, sooner or later all that wood will go up in smoke.  

[florida]

I have a production problem. I keep producing but have no market for my product so I've decided to give some to any Forum member who has never experienced the joy of lighter pine. Anyone that wants a pound, or more, please message me. All I ask is that you pay the postage which I believe is about $8.00 a pound.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I don't know if they do it any more but it used to be common to see rail car loads of Fat Light'erd stumps like that passing through N. Fla where I was raised. I think they pushed them up with bulldozers years after the trees had been timbered and the sapwood had rotted away leaving only the rock hard hearts. I heard they used them for making turpentine and have since come up with a way to make it from scratch.

    When I was real small I remember my maternal Grandpa would hook up his wagon to the mule and us grandkids would ride with him out through the pineywoods picking up light'erd knots for firewood. They were just the hearts where the limb connected to the tree and the sapwood had rotted away. 

[florida]

Yes, when I first moved here in 74 the train loads of lighter stumps was a common sight. I always heard they made turpentine with them but my brother who worked as an engineer at a Westvaco paper mill all his life told me they used them for all kinds of chemicals so I'm sure both are true.
Friday night we had a fire outside and I threw a 6 inch chunk of lighter that had too many knots to split. It practically exploded and blew fire out like a torch! I wouldn't have wanted it in my fireplace but it sure made a lot of fire and heat.

[aigheadish]

I'd never heard of fatwood until a neighbor was given a couple boxes full of it by a family member (bought from LL Bean, which is pretty close to what Southside is showing) and they gave me a box for doing some backhoe work around their house. That stuff is incredible! Using newspaper to start a fire is for chumps, this is lighter fluid, kindling, and newspaper all in one. 

[beenthere]

florida
Will take you up on your fat lighter wood offer. Sent a PM. 

Whatever the postage, I'll match that to support this Forestry Forum. Thanks for the offer. 

I light my wood stove fire with a match or flip lighter. Have often wanted to find out how the fat lighter wood would work. 

[Magicman]

I didn't know that you could start a fire without fat light'erd.


 This old brass kindling bucket has been with us for many years.

[florida]

Magicman,
Looks good! Did you bust up an old burned stump to get that? I've got some burned stumps but I have so many whole trees I don't mess with the stumps.

[Magicman]

Some sawed off stumps but mostly dead trees (snags) either fallen or pushed over.  Excavated stumps are OK but you gotta have the means to get um out.  Lotsa work busting some of them but they are really fat. 

[florida]

I just packed 2.5 pounds up for beenthere and the postage is $10.60.

I'm expanding my free store to include a set of 4 lighter pine coasters. These are about 4" across and 5/16" thick. I have one I've been tossing around and so far it's been very rugged. They won't all be the same or the same size. Same deal, whatever the postage is in a flat rate box. beenthere is also making a donation to the Forum which would be a nice thing to include.
Merry Christmas to all!

 

[Southside]

Count me in please for a large flat rate box please, I will match the same donation beenthere made. 

Those coasters look sweet! I will send you a PM.

Thanks

[WV Sawmiller]

   Nope. They ain't gonna work! Sorry but there is so much sap in them coasters they ain't never gonna turn loose of that there pint mason jar full of sweet iced tea. :D

   They do have a real pretty grain pattern. Good luck on your new career. (Would it be considered  insider trading if I started investing in new replacement chainsaw chain? :D :D)

[florida]

I thought they would be sticky too but they aren't. Don't leave them on the stove though!

You can also hang one in a window and the sunlight comes through and makes them really beautiful. If you want another one as a window hanger let me know and I'll cut it a little thinner. The coasters are cut from limb pieces and you can see the compression side and the tension side. I love them because they are beautiful and because they have a story.

[SawyerTed]

Homemade creek water won't allow the coaster sap to stick to the mason jar.  At least that's what they tell me. 

[beenthere]

florida
Thank you very much for the package of fat lighter sticks. Just in time, as I postponed lighting the wood stove in our great room (was 11° F out there this morning) for family coming tomorrow for Christmas (decided to do it after I picked up the mail). Perfect timing.

[Magicman]

fat lighter sticks

Now to keep da true Southern thang goin', it's properly mis-pronounced; Fat Light'erd.   ;D

[florida]

beenthere
Great! Let us know how you like it. We had a fire in the back yard last night and I let my grandson pick up all the lighter scraps he could find and  throw them on the fire. It was a hot  fire!

Magicman

One of my brothers calls it fat wood, another calls it fat pine, my Daddy always called it lighter and I know a few people call it, as you do, lightered. As I've gotten older I started calling it fat lighter because most people had no idea what I was talking about and still don't. Call it what you will, still the best fire starter there is!

[Magicman]

Amen brother.  I actually call it fat lighter most of the time, but no matter what, it will git-r-goin'.

[beenthere]

Two sticks, and it got-R-goin. Temp in great room up to 24° now, and climbing. Should be good temp for Christmas dinner at noon tomorrow. 
Outside still windy and minus a few degrees for the night.
Much appreciate the chance to try these fat lighter sticks out.

[Magicman]

Just imagine what happens to the blade when you hit a patch of lighter in a lightening struck tree/log when you are sawing. 

[barbender]

All I know about fat lighter, being from glaciated country, are stories a friend who moved down to middle Georgia for 5-6 years told me that stuck in my head. He was explaining some of the things that really struck him that were different from Minnesota to Georgia, and one was this "fat lighter", a semi-magical fire starting material harvested from pine stumps that was so valued that good friends would stab each other right in the back over a good fat lighter spot. My good friend couldn't understand the mania surrounding it, being that the Southerners didn't have much need of starting fires anyhow, in his estimation. At any rate, what I took from it is that even a good, upstanding and trustworthy southern man like Magic Man for example, can not be trusted when it comes to fat lighter😊😂 

[Magicman]

Us Southern folk trust no one when it comes to our Wives and our Lighter Stash.  :D

[dougtrr2]

Can you use the coasters to keep your coffee or hot chocolate warm? ;D

Doug in SW IA

[florida]

Doug,
As long as you light them on fire first but your wife might rather have cold coffee.

Funny thing. I'd made a fire early this morning and was sitting there watching it burn when I noticed a tree down behind the shed. I walked over and bless Pat if it's not an old lighter pine!  It's really old, obviously been dead a long time. So long that the outside has dried up and started to rot.probably only 6 inches of good lighter but it will be so old it won't be sticky anymore and most of it will be the dark red that makes it burn so well.

[JD Guy]

Us Southern folk trust no one when it comes to our Wives and our Lighter Stash.  :D

The only true friend is one you can leave alone with your wife,guns and money and when you return they will all be in the same condition as when you left..
smiley_fiddler

[WV Sawmiller]

    Never heard it called anything but light'erd where I grew up in N. Fla.

   Tough as a Light'erd knot.

    A light'erd stump, a light'erd splinter, etc.

[barbender]

JD Guy, why set anyone up for failure?🤷‍♂️😊

[Dan W]

Here in the UP there aren't very many old EWP or RP fire charred stumps left.  Excellent for starting a fire.  So at camp if the fire would burn out during the night, someone would get out of bed to stoke it up again with the black charred kindling.  Pretty hard to avoid getting some black on your hands and underwear.  So it became known as "underwear black"!😄

[barbender]

Old timers tell me that when they were kids, one of their jobs was to gather wood from burned out old growth pine stumps for their mother's wood cookstove, it was the preferred fuel.

[WV Sawmiller]

    My dad used to tell the tale of a neighbor who used light'erd to smoke his meat. Everyone in the community accused him of being a meat thief and raiding other people's smokehouses and stealing their meat because they knew his was not fit to eat.

[bluthum]

I find it therapeutic to split easy splitting stuff. Easter red cedar is often my choice and I use each little scrap for stove kindling or tinder. A perfect piece you can split to incredibly small splinters just with a twist of a pocket knife blade. 

Rich pine I use for starting fires outdoors only, it can be a little too sooty for my taste in a flue.

[doc henderson]

catalpa is great to split, and nice to burn.  min. coals but smells like an old man smoking a pipe outside.

[Don P]

It is just about a refinery on the stump.
When I worked in a shop that made SYP furniture we defected out the fatwood, most of us kept a box full of prime stuff under the saw for ourselves or friends.

We had bought the land here, 4 hours away, and would come up to our tiny shed on weekends and work (we didn't know it was cool :D). It had what we called a tin stove inside. They were made out of the same thin steel as a stovepipe and regularly burned down houses till they were finally outlawed.

We arrived one Friday night in the cold rain only to find the woodpile was soaked. I had a box of fat lighter inside and loaded a healthy double handful of kiln dried fatwood into the little stove, and touched it off. It was warming things up very nicely. Then it went nuclear. As all that pitch started vaporizing the little stove started puffing and dancing on the floor. We made our way to the door of the shed but the door of the stove beat us there :D.