Main Discussion Area > Primitive Skills
Pine pitch
jeff halfrack:
after I talked to halfeye, I mixed my pitch with some toilet bowl wax ring, it's great for my boots, and my 3d arrows pull real easy thanks Rich !! JEFFW
nclonghunter:
I have made very little pine pitch, but some of the posts have gotten me thinking....oops
I lived in south Florida for a while and I was told that "fat lighter" or "pine lighter" or what ever you want to call it, is taken from dead pines that STAND in swamp water. The pine sap will collect in the base below water and it will be concentrated making a "lighter wood" that will burn when taken directly out of the swamp. The water contains the pine sap in the tree base. It is very yellow and has an incredibly strong pine scent and is the best fire starter you can find.
The other part is I now live in North Carolina where the "Tar Heels" are part of history, it is my understanding that "tar" is made from the abundant pine trees in this state. I have read somewhere that the pine logs were placed inside a metal container, maybe an upside down metal trash can for example and a fire built all around it creating intense heat inside. The heat would drive the hot sap out of the wood and would be collected below. Searching the process for making pine tar may be a process usable for making pine pitch in larger quantities.
So if a man could get real fat lighter from a swamp area and use the pine tar method of extracting the sap, I would suspect he would have some fine pine pitch.
I wonder if native Indians using clay earthen pots turned upside down as a heat chamber ever extracted sap from pine wood?
Pat B:
The "fat lighter" or "fat wood" that we were familiar with growing up in Savannah was from standing deat long leaf yellow pines or the stumps from felled long leaf yellow pine. It occurs in many pines in the heart of the trunks and limbs after the tree dies and the resins concentrate there.
My best source of pitch is finding wounded pine trees(naturally and man made) and collecting the hardened pitch globs attached to these trees or near theit trunk.
Steve Parker(Hillbilly) described the method of cooking out the pitch from fat wood in metal ovens a few years ago. Apparently it was common in the Southern Appalachians too.
beetlebailey1977:
Here is a little I gathered yesterday.
nclonghunter:
this youtube video was interesting; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5I3_4UAi0I
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