When the Weather outside is Frightful... render pine pitch!

[Cobweb]

It is chucking it down outside, I don't have central heating so I have a paraffin heater instead, IM not sure when it was made, but it looks old and is still going strong today!

It throws out so much heat it seems a shame to just let it heat the house, so I put a shell full of pine resin on top to render!

 

[drewdunnrespect]

once you have rendered the pitch pine what are you going to do with it then cobweb

 

[Shewie]

Will you fikter out the crud Michelle to give a cleaner finished product ?

 

[Cobweb]

@Drew: As it's such a small amount I'll probably just put it around a stick for later.

@Shewie: Yeah, I'll punch some holes in a tin and strain it through that or I may drill a hole in the shell and suspend it over another container and let the resin drip through.
EDIT: I've drilled a hole in another shell to let it drip through, it was easier than mucking about with a tin can lol

 

[DaveBromley]

What prompted this? did you just want to have a crack at it or were you practising for a bigger project later?

Dave

 

[Cobweb]

The cat has the right idea, saying indoors when it's like this, and the smell of the resin isn't seeming to bother him too much.

The melted and cooled resin from eralier, it's very glassy at the moment so it needs some beeswax in it, or some charcoal, I have beeswax so I'll use that!
The shell you see will be my strainer.

After drilling a small hole in the strainer shell I put the resin into it.

On the top of the heater, I have put another shell which I hope will act as a buffer to the catching shell if it cracks.

It's not very easy to see here but there are a total of three shells.
The first one on the bottom is to catch any resin that may fall through if the middle shell cracks. The top one is the filter shell, it has a small hole to let the liquid resin through but none of the larger debris.

 

[Cobweb]

@Dave: I was just bored, found a stash of pine resin the other day which I had collected earlier in the year and promptly forgot about. I was looking at the heater (procrastinating really, should be working lol!) and I was thinking about getting the bushcraft kettle on it (it does get hot enough to boil water on, but it takes about ten minutes for a rolling boil) when I remembered the pine resin which needed rendering.

I have quite a few fire based projects planned but with this weather I can't be bothered to go outside in the snow and make one. I need more charcloth as well, but I don't think it would be wise to do it in the house hahaha.