Do you make and sell FATWOOD

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

I am curious if anyone makes and seeks fatwood?  I saw that Amazon has a 20 pound box of 240 pieces for sale at $50.  That seems like an attractive value-added product, but in all my travels for many years, I have not seen a sawmill doing that.

For those that live outside the South, firewood is real sappy pine wood that is used to start fires as it burns easily.  Years ago I saw paraquat used on trees prior to harvesting to increase the sap production...not sure if it is legal or safe anymore.

[btulloh]

I use it and wouldn't start a fire any other way. Around here the. VA pines mostly produce skinny pieces with the biddest part at the knots. Pick it up in the woods after everything else has rotted away. Stumps can be a good source. It would be hard or impossible to process what we have here for sale. Usually I crush the knots in the wood splitter to produce a lot of small oddly shaped pieces. Works great, but really just for personal use. 

Tried sawing knots with the 14" bandsaw but it gums up so quickly it's a nightmare. 

The stuff sold commercially must come from a different species and mainly GA and SC. I can't even imagine buying it for what they charge, although I can't get along without it. Plenty of it to pick up in my woods even though they're 97% hardwood now. Plenty of relics from the past out in the woods from when there were a lot of big pines. 

Whoever is processing it for sale has obviously perfected the process for cleaning gum off the equipment. 

[ESFted]

The stuff I find around my part of VA is about the same.  I look for the stumps left from logging big old pines... the pitch concentrates in the center part of the stump and everything else rots away.  It chips rather than splits and a small piece will light a fire every time. Sometimes they call it pine lighter. I'm still using a chunk I found twenty years ago.

Not really sure where the wood in the fat wood bundles comes from, but am pretty sure it's not the same stuff I look for around here.  No way it would split so neatly.