How To Make Pitch (glue) from Pine Trees

So these pine trees I'm surrounded by today have been used by people for thousands and thousands of years. Simple things like making tea from the needles. The timber is still used in the construction industry today. You can even obtain a food from deep within the bark. But I'm interested in something a little different today that's going to help us make a glue. That is pitch. So pine trees when damaged will secrete a resin. It's much like the tree's immune system. Many people confuse it with the sap, where it is very very different. Helps protect the tree when it's damaged from infections and diseases. It also lends itself to us as well medicinally. We can use it wound dressings. It'll help remove foreign bodies like splinters. It's anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial properties. It could even be used as a temporary tooth filling. So it can be quite hard to spot the resin on the tree. It almost looks like bark close up. But if you break these lumps off and turn them you can see the orangey colour to it. Which is the resin. Just gets a lot of muck and debris stuck in it while it's still wet. So you can find this anywhere the tree's damaged. If it's lost a limb, another tree's fallen and damaged the bark. Or a deer rubbing antlers on the tree can damage it. It's basically the tree's immune system. So much like when you cut yourself and a scab forms, the same thing will happen on the tree. So this is a really nice sustainable way of gathering this. You can tap the tree or cut into the bark to encourage it to release the resin. But there's no need to. Anywhere the tree is damaged it will secrete this. We can just break these off the tree so we can gather them and take them to make the pitch. As with any good bushcraft lesson you'll need to build a good fire. Once the fire's going we just need it to die down a bit. We're only after the embers, not an absolute roaring heat. Just enough heat to melt the resin. Too much heat it will ignite. It's got turpentine in it so it is flammable. And obviously not enough heat but it won't melt so we can get on with making the pitch. Okay so now we've got our resin straight from the tree. There's all sorts of bits in it. Bits of bark, moss, probably insects in there as well. We need to remove most of if not all of that. What you would then be left with is what's known as rosin. So the pure resin if you like with all the bits out of it. That is used today still by gymnasts, rock climbers to help improve grip, weightlifters, you know that kind of thing. But for today we're just going to be making the pitch with it. So as this is melting all the impurities are still up the top of the pan here and the resin is melting and running away from it. This little hole I've got in the side of the pan here, what I can now start to do is pick that up and tip it. I can tip the resin that's melted through the hole into another pan and it'll leave all the rubbish behind. Now we've got an exact amount of resin we can use to gauge the other parts that we need to add to it. The next big part is charcoal. That's going to act as a binder, help strengthen it. The resin on its own is very brittle. It'll just break and crack. So we're going to get this ground up and add that to it. So we're looking for about three parts resin to one part charcoal roughly. So now we've got a charcoal ground up we can re-melt the resin and get the charcoal stirred into it. So next on the list we need it to be flexible. So as it is now it will still be relatively brittle. By adding something like beeswax or animal fat of any sort really, this is deer fat, that will help this remain flexible. The only other thing you can add is kind of vegetable matter or plant fibres, usually in the form of rabbit or deer droppings and that just acts like a reinforcement, a bit like steel in concrete. What we can do now, just remove it from the heat and as it starts to cool, one way to store this is literally on a stick. So as it cools we can wipe the stick around in there, let a little layer build up on the end of the stick and as it cools down we can keep dipping it in and building it up layer upon layer. I like to shape mine so it's got a little point at the end, just makes it easier to apply to things when you want to use it and then leave it on the stick. It will store on there, just chuck it in a bag and then when you want to use it you can just reheat it over the fire and apply it to whatever you want to stick. There we go, great fun activity there, it's awesome to do with kids as well, a lot of fun and a handy skill to have under your belt.