Fire Starter

 I was out on Saturday trimming some limbs off of a few lop lolly pine trees on my property when I noticed at the bottom some dried sap.  Last week I was surfing the YouTube channel and watched this kid use this stuff to start a fire with.

So I thought I would give it a try and see how well this pine sap worked as a fire starter.

My son and I put a piece on two boards and used the magic wizard stick (that is what I call these new lighters) to see how it would burn.

We had a little mixed reviews on the initial burn.  The pine sap had to first turn to a liquid before it would burn but once it melted it burned like a candle.

The next step was to take the pine sap to the next level and see if it would actually start a fire.  I made a fire layout of cedar as the base, I put some pine sap on top, then of course it was fine dead branches, twigs, sticks, then a few pencil sized pieces to sustain the fire.  Then by my side I had a decent stack of dead sticks and my son had split some logs to put on once the fire was burning good.

The pine sap worked great and I think I might be putting a little of it in my survival pack for the future.