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

[AncientArcher76]

Pappy I have kinda a dumb question??? Is there an easy way or whatis the bestway in collecting the pitch?  Do u scar a branch so itleaks out?  Itis freezing here in NY maybe if I climb a tree  I can find itfroze in a clump?  There are tons of pine here butI dontsee a whole lotof pitch on some of them.  Hmmm i'll have to take a closerlook I guess!

Thanks

Russ

[JackCrafty]

"...And now we will, uh, go look for some poop!  Some deer poop ..." 

Interesting video.  Good sense of humor.

[Pappy]

I get it mostly from trees that had the limbs trimmed off at the trunk.I have tried scaring some trees but didn't get much from that.
   Pappy

[beetlebailey1977]

I find trees that logging equipment has damaged or road side cutting tractors have damaged.  And trees that on my place that I have trimmed or cut limbs off of.

[cracker]

Would the runny sap out of a pine serve the same purpose after it's cooked? It's fairly easy to obtain and I got about ten million pines around me.

[Pat B]

Ronnie, as long as you cook the terps from the pitch it will work for glue and varnish. If you don't cook it until it is hard and brittle the glue or varnish will come out sticky.   Be careful cooking it though. Pine pitch is very volatile and WILL combust if overheated.
  You do live in the piney woods og GA don't cha!

[cracker]

You betcha around here an enterpreising land owner will work terpentine from the trees to make extra money comonly called tarheeling in you're neck of the woods.
Ron

[Pat B]

Making them cat faces!    I'm originally a cracker too!

[cracker]

That's it exactly. Ive seen them load a 3/4 ton pickup to the breaking point with barrels full of the stuff.
Ron

[Pat B]

I remember as a kid going down Hwy 17 near Brunswick where the Hercules Plant was, there was a pile of catfaces that had been pulled from the ground that was 100' high. I think they made gunpowder from it. I remember the piney smell riding down Hwy 17 on a steamy summer day.
  I used to have a few terra cotta pitch pots that were used to catch the pitch as it came from the catfaces.