Pine

[Thenihilist]

I've spent the whole day out with a spade and flip flop winch tearing out pine stumps so I can extract the resin, hopefully get a few litres out of it all but this was a massive amount of work and im looking for a less time consuming method of getting resin by the litre.

I have a friend who has 12 pines he's wanting felled to make space. If I felled them I want to completely debark the trees to make berry baskets and various other types of container, I want the needles for coiled baskets, and the roots for lacing and various types of basket, hats, water bottles etc

If I debark the trees while there still standing, the wood will then become saturated with resin hopefully, but if i left it standing id likely lose the needles to the wind, also if i remove all the roots it'll kill it outright and I'll get no resin at all.


I'm not too clued up on the manner in which the tree becomes resin saturated, do the roots need to be intact for this to happen?

I'm thinking the best method will be to barber chair them, so i can debark them easier and get the needles, leave it for a month then come back and remove the remains of the stump for processing the resin but the roots will have likely have deteriorated.

Any advice on how to go about this?

 

[Toddy]

Pine needle baskets are made from long needle pin. Most of ours are too short to be worth the bother, so check before you give yourself a lot of work. I had a go with Scots Pine just before Christmas and it was a enormous footer with not a lot of joy in the end ( compost heaped the lot), and I'm pretty patient. You might well have more success though.

Pine bark isn't ideal for weaving, tbh. It's inclined to snap rather than bend. Not saying you can't use it, of course you can, but it's a heck of a lot of effort for sommat not so brilliant. The inner bark, well the middle bark, iimmc, kind of carves not badly though The inner inner bark is edible. Roast it and grind it up and use like flour.

There is a truly excellent document (it's book sized) available on line. It's called Conifers and their Uses, non wod forest products from conifers.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/X0453E/X0453e00.htm

Well worth a read for anyone, especially those taking down pine trees and wondering how best to make use of them

Best of luck with it

cheers,
M

 

[Everything Mac]

The inner inner bark is edible. Roast it and grind it up and use like flour.

cheers,
M

Well I never. Is it good?
All the best
Andy

 

[Toddy]

S'alright

I went looking for a link with photos and this fellow both boils and fries it :yikes: didn't know you could do that to it but he mentions the method I know but doesn't show it
Sod's law
Basically roast it and then grind it up like flour.
Anyway, here's thon fellow's link

http://www.tacticalintelligence.net/blog/how-to-eat-a-pine-tree.htm

atb,
M

 

[Thenihilist]

Thanks, I don't use the bark for weaving with but use the middle bit, scrape the outside off and its quite pliable, use it for cups to buckets.

As for the cambium, I've got a few kilos of it, when the forestry commision fell em i strip the logs

 

[HillBill]

Isnt it turpentine you get from the stumps?

 

[mountainm]

Isnt it turpentine you get from the stumps?

Turpentine is the solvent in the resin, evaporating it off gives you solid pine pitch.

 

[HillBill]

Ah, fair enough mate

 

[Everything Mac]

Well there you go. Learning something new everyday!
Andy

 

[Thenihilist]

Turpentine is the solvent in the resin, evaporating it off gives you solid pine pitch.

As far as I understand it. Pine pitch( also called cutlers resin) is glue made using rosin, sawdust and beeswax. When the resin comes out the tree it contains turpentine, which stops it from setting, hence why it will be sticky, the solidified resin found on the trees is rosin which is resin without turpentine.To make pitch you need to get rid of the turpentine or it will be sticky, this is usually done by heating it over a fire and evaporating it off however when im doing this with a litre or more of resin it is very likely to catch fire so I prefer to boil the resin in water so that the turps then gets into the water and the rosin can be extracted. Now you have turp free rosin for pitch production and you can use the turp water to clean resin off of tools. If you want to be really cool you can then distill the turp water in a pressure cooker to get rid of the water and be left with turps.Unless you have the ability to use steam distillation in the first place.

 

[mountainm]

As far as I understand it. Pine pitch( also called cutlers resin) is glue made using rosin, sawdust and beeswax. When the resin comes out the tree it contains turpentine, which stops it from setting, hence why it will be sticky, the solidified resin found on the trees is rosin which is resin without turpentine.To make pitch you need to get rid of the turpentine or it will be sticky, this is usually done by heating it over a fire and evaporating it off however when im doing this with a litre or more of resin it is very likely to catch fire so I prefer to boil the resin in water so that the turps then gets into the water and the rosin can be extracted. Now you have turp free rosin for pitch production and you can use the turp water to clean resin off of tools. If you want to be really cool you can then distill the turp water in a pressure cooker to get rid of the water and be left with turps.Unless you have the ability to use steam distillation in the first place.

My recipe is rosin, charcoal and dried rabbit poo... But I always thought rosin==pitch given the other ingredients vary wildly?

 

[Thenihilist]

Pitch is made differently depending on what you want it for, I mix it for specific jobs. When you make resin the ingredients, are for strengh( sawdust, charcoal, dried herbivores poop etc) and elasticity( beeswax, veggie oil etc) charcoal and beeswax are most common though.

 

[Thoth]

Sorry to hijack this thread somewhat, but there are clearly some clued-up folks here. I've got about 5kg of birch bark stripped from rotted birch-logs. I want to have a go at making birch oil/tar. I've got the general idea of packing a tin with bark, small hole in the tin lid, place over a collecting tin, burn a fire over the top. I'm certain though that although I've had the bark inside in the warm for a couple of weeks that there is still some water in the birch-bark. Will the water generate steam and blow the tin and lid apart and spoil any chance of getting any oil/tar? Should I try and dry it all out properly?

 

[Toddy]

That's one of the reasons for the little hole in the lid; steam and solvents will evaporate through it, meaning that expansion as the set-up heats up, it won't blow the whole thing apart.
If you don't have that little hole, all you'll have made is a bomb :yikes:

I'd just dry off the bark as well as you can, or have patience for , and go for it.

cheers,
M

 

[Thoth]

Thanks Toddy. Yes I'm familliar with 'paint-tin bombs' from my mis-spent youth When I've done this before I've banked earth up around the lower edge of the tin but always had much drier bark in it. I know this won't be an air tight seal but wondered if it would still restrict the egress of steam enough to 'pop' the lid. My birch-bark has been sat in a breathable bag over a radiator and has already lost about half a kg of water, but it's still quite damp. Maybe I need to open it out a bit more. SWMBO gets a bit grumpy when I stack every radiator with bundles of strange damp stuff tho!

 

[Toddy]

Uhuh ....Son2 gets royally vexed when the tea towels that hang above the kitchen radiator have, " anonymous bits of dead tree dangling from them! " For some reason mugwort and birchbark are the worst offenders
I think they're clean enough, but he likes his salad still green, iimmc

From the shots at the tar that I've done/seen, all that happens is that the jet of steam/vapour just gets a bit more intense.
I suppose you could put in other holes, just having more little plugs to hand too. It'd be a kind of peace of mind.

I need to do this soon too; I've got three packed tins in my shed full of birchbark.

Interested to hear how yours works out


cheers,
Toddy

 

[santaman2000]

Isnt it turpentine you get from the stumps?

Yes. Sort of. The old turpentine mills around here used to extract the resin exclusively from litard stumps (fatwood stumps) to process the turpentine.

 

[santaman2000]

...I'm not too clued up on the manner in which the tree becomes resin saturated, do the roots need to be intact for this to happen?...

It is entirely controlled by the season. In the Spring the sap (resin) begins to run and rise into the tree. By Summer it's high and the trunk is saturated. In Autumn it begins to drop towards the roots where it remains throughout the Winter. That's why stumps from trees felled (or broken by weather) in the Autumn or Winter develop into litard (fatwood)

 

[georann]

Well isn't this a thread full of knowledge! Think I may watch this one. :You_Rock_

 

[santaman2000]

That's one of the reasons for the little hole in the lid; steam and solvents will evaporate through it, meaning that expansion as the set-up heats up, it won't blow the whole thing apart.
If you don't have that little hole, all you'll have made is a bomb :yikes:

I'd just dry off the bark as well as you can, or have patience for , and go for it.

cheers,
M

This is quite interesting. I understand the concept you're describing but I've never actually seen anyone try to extract turpentine on an individual basis. Just the large commercial stills that used to be so common. I remember truck loads of litard stumps going into the compound all day. What a stink those plants used to put out.