Harvesting Pine Pitch

[Friar]

Does anybody have a good reference explaining an efficient way to gather pine pitch?  Or could someone talk me through it?  I'm hoping to make my first batch of glue.

Thanks!  Really am loving the community y'all have built, appreciate y'all making it open and passing things on.

[TRACY]

Try this link

http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,36559.0.html

Tracy

[Friar]

Thanks Tracy - good information.

But what about effective methods of gathering pine resin off the trees in preparation for making the glue?

Appreciate the help

[BowEd]

Friar......It's a timely question that you ask there.Spring is coming soon here.I've had luck just cutting off a limb of a pine tree close to the trunk and within a little time the sap will start to run out.Others on here might have different methods that work but that works for me.

[Friar]

Thanks Beadman!

[lostarrow]

"v" shaped notch  with a container tied under it  . Small pine trees with the soft smooth bark are easiest. Don't remove the pitch from the wound itself,That's what will keep the bugs from getting in and killing the tree. If you leave a bit of the bark at the bottom of the tree sticking out like a tag and sloped down, it should direct the pitch away from the tree and into your container. Kind of like a syrup spile .

[Marks]

try youtube search. I pic is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a thousand pics.

[Friar]

That's great info LostArrow - really appreciate it! 

And thanks Marks - I've been doing just that and love how much else I learn through the videos and the suggested videos

[Friar]

This is one of the better articles I found:

http://www.wikihow.com/Tap-a-Pine-Tree

[Thesquirrelslinger]

Nice. I usually just go around and pick up the resin globs hanging off of the tree with a stick.

[anasazi]

I tend to gather the mostly dry pitch. There is usialy tones of it around camp grounds plenty of damaged trees there.any tree with bark beetles usialy has big globs that are easy to get. Best haul i got was from a section flattened by a micro burst or something and i came out with almost a gallon of dry pitch from downed trees.

[RedBear1313]

Time is how you harvest pitch.    By investing time, while you hike and hunt in the woods keep your eyes peeled.

OR look around cultivated areas like apartment complexes, schoolgrounds, etc.

That's where I FINALLY found a tree that gave me a very good amount of pitch.

It was litterally dripping everywhere from it in HUGE amounts.

So I promptly took every globe I could grab, stuffed a couple mason jars with it, and then went ahead and made some pine pitch bee's wax for my strings.

[Pat B]

I like to find old wounds and pic the hard pitch off of it.

[bowtarist]

I like a harder pitch too. Or you can cook it down to harden it. If you use runny sap you'll end up with soft glue. I usually go to a pine woods and collect off natural wounds. It's not hard to cook it down though, but be careful it's real flammable.  Have fun, dp

[RedBear1313]

Just watched a good vid on a decent way of cleaning it up in the field last night.

I'll add and edit it to this post when I get a minute to go find it again.