Pine Resin

[Stitch]

Pine resin can be used to make glue, a fire accelerant and as a wound covering. I have never seen as much in one place as in the picture below.

[Domdabears]

Wow. Lucky you.
I have very little if any pine trees by me.
I have to buy my fatwood at the store.
No pine resin for me. :(

[Echo2]

my hands are sticky from just looking at that pic.....

how do you harvest something like that?

[Iron mike]

I also would like to know how you harvest something like that and do you have to process it to make glue/accelerant/wound dressing more please love this kind of stuff what have you done with it so far

[Nomad survivor]

Vikings used to caulk there longships with this. Use wool soaked in the pine sap to repair leaky boats/canoes. Jam the wool between seams with a knife till you fill the gap and paint over with more sap. Good to go for at least 800 years. A longship excavated about 10 years ago had water tight seams after 800 years in the ground

[kenno]

I live in a pine forest Ponderosa pine. If the tree is injured on the trunk during the growing season the sap will ooze out for quite a while and often spill onto the ground. I use a knife and a piece of tree bark to collect what I need. As the sap dries it becomes harder untill it is dry and brittle. Fresh sap is best for most projects. Coat the work with sap and dry with heat from a fire. I imagine that sap can be warmed in a vessle over low heat to make it soft again but it is flamable, makes great fire starter.

[TheLastMountainMan]

Can also be used in home made insect traps. Tried to make a mouse trap once, my idea needed improvement.

[cbprice797]

Hey Iron Mike check out my thread about pines in DIY. here is some of the stuff there.

Use the resin to waterproof articles. Also use it as glue. Collect the resin from the tree. If there is not enough resin on the tree, cut a notch in the bark so more sap will seep out. Put the resin in a container
and heat it. The hot resin is your glue. Use it as is or add a small amount of ash dust to strengthen it. Use it immediately.

You can use hardened pine resin as an emergency dental filling.

Pine pitch can be chewed or sucked on to relieve sore throats and eliminate bad breath. The warmed sap was applied to skin infections, arthritic joints and sore muscles.


It is also used internally to treat kidney problems and tuberculosis.
(I will post the more detailed instructions on this use when I get them.)

[DAVE707]

Thanks that's good to know.

[Sticks65]

Pine resin is great to use to make pine candles,i also use it for glue and fire making.

If you melt it and add ash from your fire you can make pine pitch which is a glue.

[Curdog]

Making pitch glue...

Take chunks of pine or other conifer resin and place in a bag of mesh like material or fine wire screening. I use a drain screen. Place in a large tin can, fill with water, and boil. PURE (or nearly so) resin will come to the top, leaving the trash in the screen or bag. Collect with an improvised spatula made from wood. It will leave a messy, hard to remove residue on good kitchen utensills.

Place the collected blobs of resin on a surface that you do not care about and can be discardes- wax paper or the lid to a plastic food container is a good choice. Again, this is a sticky mess! It should be about the color of honey or peanut brittle. It is not nearly as tasty however...

Take short plant fibers and mix into the goo- a piece od hemp cord minced into 1/4 inch long sections works well. So does a bit of old, weathered deer poop. Use a disposable tool to mix the materials, much will adhere to this and it may be used as a great fire starter. This will turn the resin into a thick blob that is reinforced with strong fibers.

Apply thickly- it works as much like caulk as it does glue- kinda like Gorilla Glue. The fact that the resin was never heated past 212F means it will not become nearly as brittle as stuff processed by heating with an open flame.

[Sticks65]

Making pitch glue...

Take chunks of pine or other conifer resin and place in a bag of mesh like material or fine wire screening. I use a drain screen. Place in a large tin can, fill with water, and boil. PURE (or nearly so) resin will come to the top, leaving the trash in the screen or bag. Collect with an improvised spatula made from wood. It will leave a messy, hard to remove residue on good kitchen utensills.

Place the collected blobs of resin on a surface that you do not care about and can be discardes- wax paper or the lid to a plastic food container is a good choice. Again, this is a sticky mess! It should be about the color of honey or peanut brittle. It is not nearly as tasty however...

Take short plant fibers and mix into the goo- a piece od hemp cord minced into 1/4 inch long sections works well. So does a bit of old, weathered deer poop. Use a disposable tool to mix the materials, much will adhere to this and it may be used as a great fire starter. This will turn the resin into a thick blob that is reinforced with strong fibers.

Apply thickly- it works as much like caulk as it does glue- kinda like Gorilla Glue. The fact that the resin was never heated past 212F means it will not become nearly as brittle as stuff processed by heating with an open flame.

Charcoal from the fire ground into ash also works,it makes the glue flexible.

Check this video out.

[wvwoodchopper]

We use fatwood for torches and starting fires - it's so resinous it will burn for a good long time and you can use it several times.

[myakka]

Welcome to the site Woodchopper. I think what you call "fatwood" we call "lighter knot" down here.

[EX121]

I used it once to patch a radiator, after a mounting bolt had broken and allowed it to hit the fan. I used a tin can in a pan of water to melt the hardened globs of pitch. I then used aluminum foil (was on a hunting trip so had lots of stuff) directly on the radiator & then covered it with a generous layer.
I didn't know about adding charcoal to the mixture then, but I think this would have worked better.
This patch allowed me to get truck out to a main road before it melted off.
several good youtube vids on how to make pine pitch glue.