Has anyone made pine tar?

[shaan]

I cant find pine tar anywhere for soap making, but i found some pine woods..i saw a video on YouTube using two tin cans,small one under the ground and a bigger can over it,with holes on the base to let tar pass through it and collect in the lower can..and fire burnt around it for two hours..i did the same..but unlike video,my upper can was left with pine coal and lower one had a very low quantity of pine tar like liquid collected..about 2 tablespoons.. where did i go wrong i dont know..please guide if anyone is familiar with this.

 

[judymoody]

I have never made it by hand.

It is easy to find the commercial stuff, though. On line, try Amazon. If you are in a rural area, farm supply stores will carry it.

 

[tanglewood]

Any feed store or farm supply store ( like Tractor Supply) that carries horse products will have pine tar. Horse owners use it for hooves.

 

[shaan]

Hey judy! M from India, and here its not available on Amazon.. and shipping would cost it almost four times its cost.

 

[Steve85569]

You could scrape some pitch off a pine, heat and strain it and then you would have creosote free pine tar.
Be careful if you use it fresh since it tends to be rather potent.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

From what I've read, that wouldn't actually make pine tar.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...You could scrape some pitch off a pine, heat and strain it and then you would have creosote free pine tar...."

No, that's not going to work. The solid product you can make from pine sap is rosin (colophony) and the liquid portion is turpentine.

***

Shaan, some things to think about --

The species of tree makes a BIG difference. You can get tar from many types of trees, but some trees will make far more tar than others.
You may have heated the wood up too fast. Try slowing down the heating. The conditions that make good charcoal may not make good tar.
You may simply need to try this a few more times. Just because you didn't get what you wanted this first time doesn't mean your method doesn't work. Practice makes better.

 

[shaan]

thanx DeeAnna!! yes i heated it from all sides as seen in a video. can dry pine bark be a reason? i have rosin with me. it is a thick white liquid. it smells like turpentine oil. will it make pine tar if i heat it in a closed container?

 

[DeeAnna]

No, rosin can't be turned into pine tar.

Pine tar is a crude mixture of rosin and turpentine from the pine sap and carbon (charcoal) particles from the pine wood. All of that has also been partly decomposed by the heating process.

I'm a little confused about your rosin. Rosin in my experience is a solid material, not a liquid.

You're going to get better results if you use wood for making pine tar, not bark. That's probably a big reason why your yield was so low.

 

[dixiedragon]

Making your own pine tar? I tip my hat to you!

 

[shaan]

ok..then i think that white liquid might be something else..i will try once again and keep updates!!

 

[DeeAnna]

Not to say I know everything about rosin, because I don't. But here's what I expect rosin to look like based on my experience: http://www.diamondgforestproducts.com/~shop/list/?prdPerPage=5&catId=34943