Making birch tar

[Sean Hellman]

I had a go at making tar from birch bark.
So what is this tar good for? Glue, for gluing in arrow tips into the shaft; and it is an antiseptic; but I wanted to extract for waterproofing and preserving wood.
If you have ever burnt the bark you will know it burns very well with lots of black smoke. In bush-craft circles it is known as natures fire lighter. When walking in birch woods you will see fallen trees, the old ones are nothing more than the bark holding a soft sponge of decayed wood. The bark can last for years but the wood can rot out within a year. The bark contains all sorts of tars, oils and resins which are extremely resistant to decay. It is these that I wanted to extract, and so I made a small kiln from a tin with a small hole punched in the bottom.

This tin was placed on a paving slab and metal sheets on blocks so I could put a collecting tin underneath the hole in the bigger tin.

The kiln-tin was filled with birch bark, some of which was rolled up and put in end-on, most of it just stuffed in. In future I will roll all of it up, and place end up in the kiln, as horizontal layers can stop the tar from running out of the hole. The lid must then be placed on the kiln.

Pile lots of wood and shavings around and over the kiln and set light to it. Add more wood when necessary. Looking at the photo above you can see lots of smoke coming out of the hole. I think I am wasting lots of tar as this smoke stains black, anything it comes into contact with, and is sticky.

As you can see I have a problem. The smoke and gases coming out of the hole have ignited, and this has also ignited all the collected tar in the tin. This happened a few times, so the next time I will bury the collecting tin in earth to stop air getting to the gasses and smoke, so hopefully no ignition.
The kiln was not very air tight, and as the fire burned down the kiln drew air in through the hole in the bottom. You can see in the photo, a few flames around the tin lid. The bark inside the tin was now obviously alight. I did get some big blobs of tar falling out.

All in all I think that I failed as all I got was a cube centimetre blob of tar. I think I should have got far more.



Stockholm Tar

I would like to try and make Stockholm tar one day. This is extracted from pine tree roots, and Sweden was Europe's most important exporters of this tar. Stockholm tar kept the British Navy afloat by waterproofing the wood on the ships as well as rope and steel. It is still used for treating cuts on animals, and also for soaps for skin ailments.

If anyone knows any more about 'the destructive distillation' of wood, please let me know. Do any charcoal producers set up their kilns so they can also extract the tars? I have only heard of this happening in industrial factory production.

 

[JonathanD]

If you sit the can with the bark in directly on top of the collecting can, you won't get any smoke or ignition. Bury the collecting can up to the rim. That way you will collect all of the tar without any wastage and get loads.

Impressive to see what happens when you don't do that though, thanks for posting those piccies.

 

[Toddy]

I have a lot of interest in traditional boatbuilding and there'e a lot of Stockholm tar and real turpentine used in the Galgael workshops.
These links are boatbuilding ones but give a lot of information about traditional tar production.

http://www.puuvene.net/phuhta/artikkelit/tar.html

http://www.maritime.org/conf/conf-kaye-tar.htm

cheers,
Toddy

 

[HillBill]

Bury the collecting tin to below ground level and sit the bark tin on top so that the base with the hole is an inch or two below ground level also and seal around it with soil.Punch a hole in the top tin lid to let the gasses out.

Bobs yer uncle.

Edit...just seen other replies. My method is just slightly different to jonathan's. Don't suppose it makes much difference.
If you had put a hole in your tin lid it would have worked out better.

 

[JonathanD]

If you had put a hole in your tin lid it would have worked out better.

Yeah, I actually do that too, just forgot to mention it If you don't do that, it could potentially explode. Just a small omission on my part

 

[Purdy Bear]

Ray Mears did this one:

He put the bark in an old coffee tin (with a small hole in the bottom) turned it upside down and put the open bit on to the open end of another smaller tin. Said tins were then half berried in a hole in the ground and the sides half filled in with sand (the birch one at the top). The fire was built on top and left to burn.