Main Discussion Area > Primitive Skills
Birch bark oil
M2A:
real cool. Thanks for sharing. I find this kind of stuff very interesting. I watched a video where they were "distilling" birch bark to for glue to haft points with only using primitive methods(if I recall right). I wonder what the difference in process is between getting oil or a glue, if any. Either way that's something I need to put on my list of things to do.
Mike
BowEd:
Yes your right M2A.I think the process to make make glue from birch oil is to just slowly heat the oil mixing in finely ground coal material and adding a little fiber [I used ground up dry rabbit turds]to keep it from getting too brittle.
Long ago a fellow we don't hear from much any more [IowaBo] experimented using willow coal as the best type of coal to use.There is a tutorial shown by IowaBo on the primitive skills thread.U tubes' available on that but I am not able to bring those up for some reason.
Hawkdancer:
Neat idea! Have to give that a try down the track!
Hawkdancer
Mesophilic:
I've extracted birch tar using a solvent (turpentine or alcohol, can't remember but I'mleaning toward turpentine). Don't have a whole lot of birch here, just a few that were plamted for landscaping. So I put what bark I could get in a jar and covered with solvent, let it sit for a few weeks. Evaporated off the solvent and was left with these birch tar crystals.
I can't speak for the use as a glue as I didn't get much, but I use it for its medicinal properties anyway. Being hard I can crush it in a mortar and pestle to add to salves pretty easily. Works good on certain skin conditions and cuts.
BowEd:
Cool....A little bit of that stuff can go a long ways.An adjuvent like turpentine is used to dissolve tree resin for pitch glue too.Birch does'nt grow naturally here either,but through the years I've acquired a fair amount and instead of starting fires with it I decided to made some oil from remnants of bark.As an oil it waterproofs leather an amazingly long time.
I still have some for myself for backings on bows etc.I can't part with it really as I need it for future projects on bows.
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