Please note this for better understanding and improvement of your historical knowledge-based... Not all traditional 'boiled' oils (i.e., heat-polymerized flax oil) contain chemical drying agents. This is not always true. While I agree that raw flax oil is excellent, it is not necessarily superior to oil that has been pre-polymerized through traditional heat treatment, because you can traditionally improve penetration and drying quality of your flax oil (i.e. linseed oil) if you heat treat (i.e. "boil") it yourself. This can also be done with solar energy in the vernacular provincial methods of an "August Oil Treatment" also called "Sun Oxidized" or "Sun treated." Flax oil is the least expensive and easiest to obtain but is not better than a tung or even better in my view, is a walnut oil which is a natural "drying lipid" or botanical polemicizing oil...
I'm 70 now, but I grew up on a farm. There was a company called Eastern States Co-op that basically became AGWAY and they carried a pine tar disinfectant that was mixed with water and used to clean cattle stalls, pig sties, and rabbit coops. The animals were removed and then everything was washed down and let air dry before moving the animals back in. When added to water it turned it a milky gray and we used scrub brushes to wash down the walls (no rinsing). We whitewashed the barn about every four years and used the pine tar disinfectant in the between years. They quit making pine tar disinfectant (as well as Creosote and pine tar soap) commercially, though it may be available in Amish markets yet. The railroads used creosote treated timbers for years for under the tracks because it didn't rot and killed ants and termites if they tried to eat it. Nowadays they treat outdoor lumber with a surface application of Copper Sulfate, which is why treated wood is often wet (green) when you buy it. Thanks for showing how pine tar is made. I hope people start using it again.
Very interesting. I grew up in Bolivia and we used what we called “creolina” in our mop water. It was dark brown, but diluted in water, I think it did the same thing you said - turned gray. (It’s been 40 years since I came back to the states.) It must be the same thing. We had ours in a barrel which was on its side on a rack with a spigot and would refill from that.
@jameshatton4211 I did, I remember creosoting fences and garage my father built. I remember doing it a few times but wood stayed in good comdition and never had moss or things growing on it. When I moved to USA I couldn't find it anywhere, I guess because it actually works too good? New fence panels were only $34.00 at the time and replacement was only alternative (same panel is now $85.00, Jan 2026)
I'm almost 69 and remember creosote, never lived on a farm but was somewhat rural growing up away from 'big city' We always had cats, dogs, rabbits and various other pets, were always broke but mostly happy (I'm eldest of six kids) Now, I'm more broke than ever, (even with Medicare) if it wasn't for China and Asia in general I couldn't afford to do much of anything, tariffs have really hurt, does anyone actually believe it isn't just an extra tax on 'blue collar'/middle class section of population? The Copper Sulphate is a terrible 'preservative, we have a 'fake balcony' on front of house, most of it lasted about 65 years when insurance company didn't like it so had to be removed or replaced with new wood. Less than ten years later, parts are already rotting even though 10 ft off the ground and painted every year. I know central Florida is humid for months at a time but it's ridiculous to have timber rated 'For Ground Contact' going rotten
Next time you make pine tar, don't have a hole in the lid. With the top sealed up all that goodness will drain out the bottom and produce a much thinner pruduct. I use this strait for tool handle and other wood preservatives. Needs nothing else mixed with it. Very grippy handles with no stickieness left on the hands. Great video, keep it up. God bless you and your family
@Woodbrewyou may have to screw the lid, just make sure you have plenty of holes in the bottom so pressure doesn't get to high. Just found your channel absolutely love your content and am only 100 miles or so from you
It's interesting that you've incidentally built a wood gasifyer. I've seen other RUclips videos of people running small generators with the offgas that would be coming out the top vent hole. Not to mention the biochar left over inside the tin would probably also make good natural fertilizer.
@Woodbrew the hole is to vent flammable gasses. I have seen an interesting setup that reuses these gasses immediately to heat the batch by funneling it into a pipe that went below the barrel and fed into the flames. This way they could do it with far less burning wood. Of course, some of the flammable gasses could be condensated back into oil, which is what the OC suggests. I agree that it's a good idea to capture those too, but perhaps capture them separately to experiment with them. Very easy: add a pipe on the hole, up and then off to the side slanted down towards another bucket in the ground. Keep the pipe in place at the receptacle with a wet rag to ensure condensation. The pipe itself will provide most of the cooling at first, but as the fire burns longer, the pipe will heat up and the wet rag will provide cooling. Keep the rag exposed to air and keep it wet.
Nice work dude! I’m all about real people making legit content over all the AI Garbage. Thumbs up! Making pine tar is brutal. Too much work but I think it’s important to know how to do it. A lot of my buddies make it and use it in their homemade bug repellant.
Hi, nice video! I think you shouldn't use raw linseed oil as it includes some fatty acids if I remember correctly which leads to very slow drying and it becomes kind of smelly. As I understand your concerns regarding commercially available so called boiled linseed oil because of the added drying agents which are harmful to human health, you definitely can easily produce your own pure boiled linseed oil. The key is to cook raw linseed oil slowly and always remember that cotton clothes soaked with linseed oil are highly self-inflammable when exposed to oxygen! Don't trow them into a bin or similar, but put them into a air sealed metal container or jar. Here is the basic process of producing pure boiled linseed oil: 1) Boil the raw linseed oil slowly at around 160°C for around 4 hours (preferably outside ;) and stir it occasionally 2) Let it cool down and filter the oil through some cotton clothes into another pot of the same size you used in step 1 3) Boil the filtered oil for 4h again like in step 1 also taking care not to overheat it and keeping the temperature as constant as possible 4.) Final filtration through cotton clothes into some jar or whatever container you like The reason why you do want to use pure boiled linseed oil is that it actually polymerizes much faster than raw ones, and as far as I know the ol' guys and girls used boiled linseed oil. Then you should also try to mix the oil and the pine tar in a different way. One traditional way is to heat it gently in a water bath while mixing all ingredients together. We have to understand what our ancestors already found out and which got forgotten because everything had to be aligned to industrial processes to make the end user dependent on industry. Our ancestors understood that they needed to protect the wood by building using several layers of defense against rot and mold: 1) You need to remove the nutrients that attract fungi and insects by removing the lignin and hemicellulose by exposing the wood to some alkaline or chloride environment Depending on region and availability some of our ancestors used to put their wood into some lime bath or into salty sea water for around a week like the vikings did. Some real advanced guys that had no access to lime ore sea water even used urine. ;) 2) Properly season your wood afterwards in a shady but airy protected environment for several month or even years until the wood had the proper moisture concentration. During the seasoning the lime or sea water treatment leads to some mineralization further protecting the woods cellulose fibers. 3) Now the pine tar linseed oil mix comes into play but there they also understood that they need to build up layers of defense First thing to understand are the functions of the different ingredients. The pine tar is antiseptic but the linseed oil is for stabilizing the wood by filling the "gaps" that developed by removing the lignin and hemicellulose. The polymerized boiled linseed oil actually creates a wood composite while binding to the wood (cellulose) fibers. This final composite wood is much stronger and much more stable when it comes to temperature and moisture changes and the tar is defending against fungi and insects. Second thing to understand is that the protection need to be applied in layers. In the first 2-3 layers you want to use some natural thinner like natural turpentine. The first layer you really want to apply a very thinned protection which gets soaked up by the wood very deeply. Maybe start with a 50:50 ratio and with each next layer you are reducing the amount of turpentine, and obviously it is also a good idea to let each layer dry for some time before applying a new layer. Long story short. Our ancestors already figured out to produce what we call a composite material nowadays and that's why the wood they processed is much more resistant and stable and lasts for centuries, only using locally available natural materials and ingredients. Cheers, Chris
Keeping in mind boiled linseed oil got its name not from boiling, but because air was blown through it, to effect its prepolymerization, and that process gave the appearance of it being boiled. If you want to slow the polymerization, keep moving the hardening oil around, to minimize any portion of the treated surface being subjected to oxygen, which hardens the flax seed oil. That, on top of mixing with pine tar, would work to that end. AND, if one really wants penetration, that mentioned turpentine, or at least mineral oil, say, 15%, is a must, since the viscosity of the pine tar and linseed oils don't lend themselves to that. The foregoing aside, that flax seed oil is being used and the VERY slow hardening process that comes with its use would help penetration, but it isn't going to be a quick wicking process.
The wooden churches (stavkirke) in Norway stand against hundreds of years of harsh climate thanks to pine tar (tretjære). Heat it or mix with turpentine and boiled linen oil for easy application and absorption. Linen oil has some additional benefits of course. It actually never dries out completely but touchable after sometime (days in summer and weeks in winter)
Pine Tar has protected buildings in the Northern climbs for 400 years without the paint on top cracking or peeling. The reason why we don’t do that now is because it is SOOOOO flammable…. Lovely and long lasting as it is, it would, in some climates, be an incredible danger to the person in the house
Balsam Fir resin is used a lot for its healing properties. My aunt calls her tree "My Medicine Tree" and if you get a cut or scrape, she sends you out to pop a blister on its bark and you rub the sap into the cut or scrape. they heal faster than just about any other treatment out there.
Also helps clear sinuses when you eat the contents of those little blisters. :) I really like balsam trees. A tree-cutter I hired last year couldn’t tell balsam trees. He needed to cut one in the area he was working in. I saved all the branches and dried them out and made a lot of balsam pillows. Boy, do they smell sweet. My grandma used to make balsam bags. I sleep with one like she did.
In my youth (many years ago) we water proofed our wood skis with pine tar. Used a propane torch to carefully heat the tar as you wiped it off driving the tar into the wood. Loved that smell, still brings back great memories every time I smell pine tar. We still use it on horse hooves.
Awesome! Fyi when putting a mason jar in a pot like that if you line the bottom with Mason lid rings it will A: help stabilize the jar, so it doesn't tip when it starts to boil, and B: decrease the chance of the jar cracking, which can happen sometimes when it's touching the bottom of the pan even when it's in water. If you wanna get real fancy, you can buy a silicone mat that's designed for that purpose. Cheers!
I know that because about 25 years ago,I was about 40 yards away from an old,probably 150 year old ,Longleaf Pine,that took a lightning shot! We were picking splinters out of our asses for several days. The tree,we thought it would die within a year. But it is still standing tall. It has a massive scar,that goes from the ground,up to about 50 feet or higher. Its very healthy,and it produces seedlings. We carefully take them,and transplant them. And do our best to nuture them,and help them grow!
Longleaf Pine trees were almost logged to extinction here in Alabama. They are a slow growing tree. But,to me,they are the Most beautiful of the pines!!
True - while not a pine, we had a several hundred year old oak on our property line near the front. My sister brought home a barn kitten that had her first litter shortly after she ‘acquired’ her. One of them had a birth defect of an underdeveloped leg. One Labor Day weekend that kitten was laying in our neighbor’s yard about 25’ from the base of the tree. Lightning struck the tree about 30’ up and blew off a strip of bark down to the ground and along one of the surface roots. It left a burn mark along the ground all the way to the kitten and left a burn circle where the cat had been. The kitten crawled its way to the front porch and died there. That scar was in that trunk for years until the people that bought the property from my parents decided they wanted the tree gone and chopped it down. Don’t know how much they got for it, but the top of the stump was better than 5’ in diameter…
@TracyG713maybe try to secure a plot of land, any size, and get it planted and make it a trust that will stay that way. Life goals, huh!? Thanks for sharing your joy here😊
the pine tar for the horses is used when putting on winter shoes or on an injured hoof, with a rubber pad between the shoes and the hoof, and tow (flax or hemp fibre) packed into the hoof to cure thrush or heal an abscess. The wadding is soaked with the pine tar. Or, after the foot is trimmed, either shod or bare, the tar is brushed on the frog, and the outside of the hoof. Always loved this stuff, old-timey farriers still use it
This stuff is awesome and my Papa taught me how to make and use this several years ago. If you add roughly a 1/4 cup of hardwood sifted ash to this it will make it even better and prevent fungi growth if you're not wanting to burn the wood first.
@deannesanville5576 burning the surface of the wood is a valid way to prevent stuff from growing on it, but it's quite the project as the burning must be slow and controlled - otherwise you'd just be using it as firewood
I hope you comprehend how blessed you are to have a stable family and property/tools/resources to explore new things in the way you are doing it. You're already super wealthy if you never made another video. You're set for success just keep doing it. Good job !!
Wow, I love it! You not only get the pine tar, but also a bunch of charcoal/biochar, making two valuable products for all of your efforts. In addition to the pine tar, if you break up the charcoal into smaller pieces and dump it into a barrel of fermented compost tea, the tea and microbes within it will soak into the pores of the charcoal, inoculating it with soil life and plant nutrients. Then mix the whole slurry in with your compost and you'll have an excellent fertility addition to add to the soil in your garden or that around your berries or orchard trees!
I'm glad you mentioned the precaution about burning a galvanized (zinc) container, and avoiding smoke. Welders avoid welding galvanized because they say it can make them very sick. Good video!
Always be careful with your chainsaw around heavy sap / pitch filled wood. I've seen enough logging shows where it atomizes and gets into the engine and the chainsaw can burst into flames... even just the friction can start the wood on fire just from cutting.
I have 2 large Norway Spruces in the front yard, and they've been a favorite for all sorts of woodpeckers... Downy, Hairy, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, Red-bellies, and possibly some Pileated woodpeckers over the years. During Covid I did some woodworking finishing experiments and absolutely went bonkers when I learned about how conifer resin works, I even have a mini crock pot to mix my resin, oil, beeswax, and other things and it's a lot of fun to learn how they all work together! I used a spruce-resin enhanced paste-wax of beeswax and walnut oil on my leather shoes before the big northeastern snowstorm and the snow just refused to stick to it! Also, if you wax shoes in the winter, make sure to keep them warmed by the fire for good penetration!
You can stop your jar bouncing around in the heating pot by placing something under the jar to separate it from the bottom of the pot. Wire mesh, loose coins etc.
Great video, and you're truly blessed to have such a fine wife and son! Pine tar has natural anti-microbial/fungal compounds in it and doesn't need anything else added if protecting wood is the end game. I know a lot of people talk about adding pure linseed oil to the mix, but I'm a devout separatist at heart and can't bring myself to do that. The way I see it, since the linseed oil is a "drying" oil and forms a hard barrier when exposed to air, it's actually contradictory to add it to the pine tar because you want the protective compounds in the pine product to be able to sink way down deep into the wood. Logcabinlooms did a short video where he showed a solid inch of penetration of the pine goodness into an oak 6x6 after it'd been coated twice in a year. I don't believe you can get that same level of penetration if you include the linseed oil because it's constantly getting more and more solid, thus closing off passages into the wood. To my thinking, it's better to make a very thin mix of pine tar and turpentine, more turps than tar, so that you can really sink that down into the wood. After a couple coats of that as a primer, then you can add your linseed oil as a top coat where it will polymerize on the surface and protect the exterior against water intrusion, etc. This allows the pine compounds to almost be trapped inside the wood by the linseed oil. Anyhow, that's what I do with my pine tar. As expensive as it is to purchase, or time consuming to make at home, being able to stretch out your stores is fairly important. 70% turpentine to 30% pine tar makes a good general-purpose blend for wood protection, especially when you refresh things every year. All of my smithing hammers and gardening tools get annual treatments with the pine tar, and they seem to last a goodly while. Also, the thinner the mix, the lighter the color, and the better a paint it makes if you add some natural ochres or oxides as a colorant. Keep up the great work.
Excellent comment. Thank you for the knowledge and thinking share. Have you ever considered setting a can of tar, maybe with turps, on a wood burner with handles soaking? I've done this with used motor oil a few times in locations that I'll not be handling. Like where the wood handle is up near a hammer head or a handle for a rake while it's detached, but ends up under the metal mostly. I'm not interested in having my hands on petrol treated wood, but the far ends, just fine. But the hot oil penetrates nicely. I've had to work a handle to reduce diameter of one handle i hot soaked, and never uncovered anywhere that hadn't been penetrated. The top of the wood burner, you couldn't keep your hand on it for one while second, and I let coast all night. The can I use is like a small coffee can, maybe a pint, but it would eventually get hot enough to not want to keep my finger tip in it after a couple handful of seconds. So maybe a few hundred degrees. But I start stuff in that can either early in the day in the workshop and can watch it all day, or start it at night and just let it all coast. If the top of a woodburner is too hot for comfort to have a can full of oil on it, you can just add a thin brick, or some thick metal, like scrap brake rotor and then add the can. The items directly on top will reduce and disburse the heat nicely and be much cooler to touch. Anyhow. I hope you try the hot oil sometime! Or hot tar rather!! I will be😊 Cheers!!~ 🌲🔥🪓🪵 I will
@RedCoalsSweatSouls I've not tried heating it, yet. I've thought about it, but it seems like a lot of work to go through for not much gain. If I was doing handles as part of a production like, I could see it possibly speeding up the process and driving the pine tar deeper into the wood, but even that's iffy. I just tarred the handles on three garden tools that desperately needed it, and simply painting the thinned tar on seemed more than enough. I had to let them sit in the sun for a few days, but the tar/turp soaked in decently enough.
@threeriversforge1997 not much work at all if you're using a wood burner already. Simply place can of goop into burner and add wood desiring to preserve, remove when content : )
The strong smell you noticed when you opened the commercial version is in part the trapped gases you allowed to burn, this highly volatile fraction and its outgases can be lit off by match strike from 3 feet away in a still area, if enclosed when that happens, disaster!
Another thing worth to mention is that the *QUALITY* of the wood extracted in the old days is way, way much better than the quality of the wood they harvest and sell us nowadays. It have to do with growing spam time and how the wood is "dense" compared to the ones they grow nowadays. The trees they grow nos is optimized to have a fast grow (thus the tree rings are fatty, almost if there is "air" inside it.). Those burn fast and warp a lot.
When heating glass jars in pot of water, put a kitchen towel or thick wash cloth under the jar in the pot, making sure to level it so jar stands evenly. When water starts to boil, the jar will not tip over-it's an old canning tip.
"Not as much in there as I hoped". Mate, you got like a 30%-40% yield or something like that. It's a super good end result. How much tar did you expect to be in that wood?
NEVER use a random "redsauce jar" on a stove top. Even on simmer, I've had the glass randomly shatter. ALWAYS use something rated for heat, like pyrex glass, ceramic, metal, etc.
My husband has been a “fire starter” since childhood!😂 He actually worked for the Forestry Service, as a fire fighter. Whenever any needs a fire, my husband is the man to call! He understands how to build a fire, proper care & safety.
heads up that essential oils aren’t ideal for salves, they can be an irritant and sensitivity can increase with use. they’re not always a problem but they can be unpredictable in terms of which ones produce a reaction in which people. great vid tho!
It has chemicals added. I won’t use boiled. They always give things benign-sounding names so people won’t know what they really do to them. “Pressure-treated” wood. “Boiled” linseed oil.
Do this with the birch and you will have resin needed to make the russian leather that no one makes any more. build a mound, inside put a tightly packed pail, surround the sides and top of the closed pail with logs, seal the whole thing, punch a few side holes and one in the top middle, light the fire from the sides, monitor it for a slow, HOT char, the bottom of the pail should have a hole with a drain mechanism downward and then angled to the bottom and outside of the mound, with another pail that will catch the resin. When it stops flowing, you're done.
3:50 Lived outside Williston, FL in the 70s - 90s on an 80 acre horse farm. It was of course mostly pasture, but there was about a 5 acre part that was still wooded with long needle pines. And a few still had slashes and the remnants of tin tar buckets nailed to them. Was fascinating.
Just bought some Kirby’s Stockholm Pine tar for a Pacific Madrone and Black Locust Picnic table. Have a gallon of Bickmore Pine Tar I’ve been using with boiled linseed oil on burned Doug fir for different outdoor home projects.
This was the first video of yours I watched. When you collected those nuggets of pine tar I was trying to imagine how good it smelled. I know more about fatwood now than I did a half hour ago. I've seen other videos where guys got it from roots and stumps, but I didn't know to look for trees that died before being cut down. That must give the resin time to settle down by gravity. I remember my dad using salve or something with pine tar in it decades ago.
Now that you know what it smells like a treat: at least in three different contexts throughout history we have a mention of this being used for, essentially, styling hair, and I'm aware of one referring to its use on moustache.
13:15 you should also avoid galvanized steel for this. A lot of people seem to be fine using it in well-ventilated places, but it still poses a health risk. Edit: Seems you mentioned this problem yourself in the video, but the wikipedia page for those who want to know what I'm talking about is Metal Fume Fever, though do your own research, ask a doctor, etc., this is just a starting point to understand why I'm saying to avoid mixing galvanized steel and fire.
I was kinda impressed when you let your little one handle his journey (mostly) by himself. I feel like it's moments where parents ease back slightly but still keep an eye on things where kids make the most growth. That's some experience moving by himself, strengthening muscles, picking delicate things up, etc. I get the feeling this kind of environment will be beneficial for him.
I’m a log home builder and rustic furniture maker. I tried pine tar, it’s pretty cool and the wood smells great, but it’s kind of a hassle. I saw a video from a guy who’s more rustic than me who was sealing his cabins with pine tar. His mix was heavier on the tar and he was heating the tar covered wood up with a torch so the tar would melt and soak into the wood better.
@4xdblackkeep moving the torch fast enough that it doesn’t ignite the tar but slow enough to melt the tar, and also keep the torch far enough back that it’s only getting a more spread out heat and not a direct flame.
@4xdblackfor small stuff a heat gun would probably work great. If I were going to attempt to seal a log cabin like that (which I wouldn’t) I would probably use a large propane torch like the ones you would use to shrink wrap a boat.
I’m off grid and as natural as possible, so I think about a fire pit with a barrel or half barrel on it to heat it. You could even do a double boiler situation where the barrel is filled with water and the pine tar is in a smaller container floating on the water in the half barrel.
Very interesting especially for the bonfire setup, it's as if pyrolysis had a step 0, starting it but preventing the cook-off and subsequent fractionation that's needed to further purify and separate things, I honestly didn't expect it to be that simple after seeing how crazy those setups get.
Bet Pine knots would work very well. It is what is left when the old pine rots away and leaves rosin soaked cores. We used them to start fires because it is potent
I love that “honey pine” finish on your wood sample. I have a couple of pine furniture pieces. One started out as a honey pine finish, the other was a much lighter tone. Pine naturally darkens over time so after 20 years the light one now has a warm honey color and the other one is a slightly richer tone.
I use a similar mix. 1 part pine tar. 1 part organic tung oil, 1 part turpentine. I try to apply it in direct sun so it soaks in better. Has worked and preserved wood for years.
GREAT video. This is another thing that I wish I had done when I was younger and able to. WONDERFUL demonstrated information here. God bless and keep you and your beautiful little family, Dylan! (from Wayne, 81, NW Arkansas)
You might try simmering a batch with water and consistent stirring. Sometimes some of the pyrolysis byproducts are more polar and will dissolve into the water layer.
Hey, what a great instructional video! I didn't know about this process at all and I am about to start a sho sugi ban project. I have a lot of pines on the property but will likely purchase the tar. However I will start extracting resin for salves. Glad I came across your work!
I painted 2 houses with wood tar thinned out with turpentine. it sucked to work with and I smelled of smoke for weeks, but it is undeniable a good alternative
Don't know why this was recommended but I watched the whole thing. Had some good times building fires in rural Alabama in my youth. Only thing you were missing was 3-4 good buddies and a case of cheap beer.
Super interesting! That’s a lot of work. Our farm the old barns are stained using old motor oil. I tried to touch up spots, but really need a sprayer or something versus wiping it on because it’s more weathered rough wood now
That raw resin, molten and sifted out of debris, can later be pulverized in a mortar and mixed with alcohol: You get soldering flux. Same resin, mix it with charcoal → you've hot glue. Mix it with glycerin or beeswax and use it to soak a porous flammable material: a Lovely firestarter wick. It is an amazing material.
Does my heart good seeing young couple raise theirr baby in such a pure beautiful way. Thank you for the lesson on how to get the pine tar. I use to go in the woods looking for rich lighter pine. The Pune had almost petrified and when cut, it smelled soooo good.
Free Pine Tar Field Notes: provenhands.com/pinetar
Meet me at the local market dates: provenhands.com/pages/2026-local-market-schedule
Please note this for better understanding and improvement of your historical knowledge-based...
Not all traditional 'boiled' oils (i.e., heat-polymerized flax oil) contain chemical drying agents. This is not always true. While I agree that raw flax oil is excellent, it is not necessarily superior to oil that has been pre-polymerized through traditional heat treatment, because you can traditionally improve penetration and drying quality of your flax oil (i.e. linseed oil) if you heat treat (i.e. "boil") it yourself. This can also be done with solar energy in the vernacular provincial methods of an "August Oil Treatment" also called "Sun Oxidized" or "Sun treated." Flax oil is the least expensive and easiest to obtain but is not better than a tung or even better in my view, is a walnut oil which is a natural "drying lipid" or botanical polemicizing oil...
Your "tote" is called a bucket 😂
set glass on a dish rag, while boiling so it doesnt crack or tip
Great stuff, no need for background orchestration. 👍
I'm curious as to which tins you used. Everything I've seen looks to be cheap aluminum with a gold color on the outside, not one color inside and out.
Burning wood to melt wood to preserve wood. I like it!
They said soak your logs in wood like it was a joke but it's for real for real
That Minecraft shit
I'm 70 now, but I grew up on a farm. There was a company called Eastern States Co-op that basically became AGWAY and they carried a pine tar disinfectant that was mixed with water and used to clean cattle stalls, pig sties, and rabbit coops. The animals were removed and then everything was washed down and let air dry before moving the animals back in. When added to water it turned it a milky gray and we used scrub brushes to wash down the walls (no rinsing). We whitewashed the barn about every four years and used the pine tar disinfectant in the between years. They quit making pine tar disinfectant (as well as Creosote and pine tar soap) commercially, though it may be available in Amish markets yet. The railroads used creosote treated timbers for years for under the tracks because it didn't rot and killed ants and termites if they tried to eat it. Nowadays they treat outdoor lumber with a surface application of Copper Sulfate, which is why treated wood is often wet (green) when you buy it. Thanks for showing how pine tar is made. I hope people start using it again.
A great share, very insightful, thank you.
Very interesting. I grew up in Bolivia and we used what we called “creolina” in our mop water. It was dark brown, but diluted in water, I think it did the same thing you said - turned gray. (It’s been 40 years since I came back to the states.) It must be the same thing. We had ours in a barrel which was on its side on a rack with a spigot and would refill from that.
They stopped making creosote? Wow I didn't know that
@jameshatton4211 I did, I remember creosoting fences and garage my father built.
I remember doing it a few times but wood stayed in good comdition and never had moss or things growing on it.
When I moved to USA I couldn't find it anywhere, I guess because it actually works too good?
New fence panels were only $34.00 at the time and replacement was only alternative (same panel is now $85.00, Jan 2026)
I'm almost 69 and remember creosote, never lived on a farm but was somewhat rural growing up away from 'big city'
We always had cats, dogs, rabbits and various other pets, were always broke but mostly happy (I'm eldest of six kids)
Now, I'm more broke than ever, (even with Medicare) if it wasn't for China and Asia in general I couldn't afford to do much of anything, tariffs have really hurt, does anyone actually believe it isn't just an extra tax on 'blue collar'/middle class section of population?
The Copper Sulphate is a terrible 'preservative, we have a 'fake balcony' on front of house, most of it lasted about 65 years when insurance company didn't like it so had to be removed or replaced with new wood.
Less than ten years later, parts are already rotting even though 10 ft off the ground and painted every year.
I know central Florida is humid for months at a time but it's ridiculous to have timber rated 'For Ground Contact' going rotten
Next time you make pine tar, don't have a hole in the lid. With the top sealed up all that goodness will drain out the bottom and produce a much thinner pruduct. I use this strait for tool handle and other wood preservatives. Needs nothing else mixed with it. Very grippy handles with no stickieness left on the hands. Great video, keep it up. God bless you and your family
Interesting, I’ll have to try that. From all my research the vent hole was necessary, but the information is pretty limited online about this.
@Woodbrewyou may have to screw the lid, just make sure you have plenty of holes in the bottom so pressure doesn't get to high. Just found your channel absolutely love your content and am only 100 miles or so from you
It's interesting that you've incidentally built a wood gasifyer. I've seen other RUclips videos of people running small generators with the offgas that would be coming out the top vent hole. Not to mention the biochar left over inside the tin would probably also make good natural fertilizer.
I've always wondered about this and would love to see it done. All the videos out there show the gasses being vented off and wasted.
@Woodbrew the hole is to vent flammable gasses. I have seen an interesting setup that reuses these gasses immediately to heat the batch by funneling it into a pipe that went below the barrel and fed into the flames. This way they could do it with far less burning wood. Of course, some of the flammable gasses could be condensated back into oil, which is what the OC suggests. I agree that it's a good idea to capture those too, but perhaps capture them separately to experiment with them. Very easy: add a pipe on the hole, up and then off to the side slanted down towards another bucket in the ground. Keep the pipe in place at the receptacle with a wet rag to ensure condensation. The pipe itself will provide most of the cooling at first, but as the fire burns longer, the pipe will heat up and the wet rag will provide cooling. Keep the rag exposed to air and keep it wet.
Nice work dude! I’m all about real people making legit content over all the AI Garbage. Thumbs up!
Making pine tar is brutal. Too much work but I think it’s important to know how to do it. A lot of my buddies make it and use it in their homemade bug repellant.
Bug repellant, huh. Maybe I'll try some in my diy horsefly/mosquito repellant for my 3 horses. Thanks!
Hi, nice video! I think you shouldn't use raw linseed oil as it includes some fatty acids if I remember correctly which leads to very slow drying and it becomes kind of smelly. As I understand your concerns regarding commercially available so called boiled linseed oil because of the added drying agents which are harmful to human health, you definitely can easily produce your own pure boiled linseed oil.
The key is to cook raw linseed oil slowly and always remember that cotton clothes soaked with linseed oil are highly self-inflammable when exposed to oxygen! Don't trow them into a bin or similar, but put them into a air sealed metal container or jar.
Here is the basic process of producing pure boiled linseed oil:
1) Boil the raw linseed oil slowly at around 160°C for around 4 hours (preferably outside ;) and stir it occasionally
2) Let it cool down and filter the oil through some cotton clothes into another pot of the same size you used in step 1
3) Boil the filtered oil for 4h again like in step 1 also taking care not to overheat it and keeping the temperature as constant as possible
4.) Final filtration through cotton clothes into some jar or whatever container you like
The reason why you do want to use pure boiled linseed oil is that it actually polymerizes much faster than raw ones, and as far as I know the ol' guys and girls used boiled linseed oil.
Then you should also try to mix the oil and the pine tar in a different way. One traditional way is to heat it gently in a water bath while mixing all ingredients together.
We have to understand what our ancestors already found out and which got forgotten because everything had to be aligned to industrial processes to make the end user dependent on industry.
Our ancestors understood that they needed to protect the wood by building using several layers of defense against rot and mold:
1) You need to remove the nutrients that attract fungi and insects by removing the lignin and hemicellulose by exposing the wood to some alkaline or chloride environment
Depending on region and availability some of our ancestors used to put their wood into some lime bath or into salty sea water for around a week like the vikings did. Some real advanced guys that had no access to lime ore sea water even used urine. ;)
2) Properly season your wood afterwards in a shady but airy protected environment for several month or even years until the wood had the proper moisture concentration. During the seasoning the lime or sea water treatment leads to some mineralization further protecting the woods cellulose fibers.
3) Now the pine tar linseed oil mix comes into play but there they also understood that they need to build up layers of defense
First thing to understand are the functions of the different ingredients. The pine tar is antiseptic but the linseed oil is for stabilizing the wood by filling the "gaps" that developed by removing the lignin and hemicellulose. The polymerized boiled linseed oil actually creates a wood composite while binding to the wood (cellulose) fibers. This final composite wood is much stronger and much more stable when it comes to temperature and moisture changes and the tar is defending against fungi and insects.
Second thing to understand is that the protection need to be applied in layers. In the first 2-3 layers you want to use some natural thinner like natural turpentine. The first layer you really want to apply a very thinned protection which gets soaked up by the wood very deeply. Maybe start with a 50:50 ratio and with each next layer you are reducing the amount of turpentine, and obviously it is also a good idea to let each layer dry for some time before applying a new layer.
Long story short. Our ancestors already figured out to produce what we call a composite material nowadays and that's why the wood they processed is much more resistant and stable and lasts for centuries, only using locally available natural materials and ingredients.
Cheers,
Chris
Keeping in mind boiled linseed oil got its name not from boiling, but because air was blown through it, to effect its prepolymerization, and that process gave the appearance of it being boiled.
If you want to slow the polymerization, keep moving the hardening oil around, to minimize any portion of the treated surface being subjected to oxygen, which hardens the flax seed oil. That, on top of mixing with pine tar, would work to that end.
AND, if one really wants penetration, that mentioned turpentine, or at least mineral oil, say, 15%, is a must, since the viscosity of the pine tar and linseed oils don't lend themselves to that.
The foregoing aside, that flax seed oil is being used and the VERY slow hardening process that comes with its use would help penetration, but it isn't going to be a quick wicking process.
The wooden churches (stavkirke) in Norway stand against hundreds of years of harsh climate thanks to pine tar (tretjære). Heat it or mix with turpentine and boiled linen oil for easy application and absorption. Linen oil has some additional benefits of course. It actually never dries out completely but touchable after sometime (days in summer and weeks in winter)
Pine Tar has protected buildings in the Northern climbs for 400 years without the paint on top cracking or peeling. The reason why we don’t do that now is because it is SOOOOO flammable…. Lovely and long lasting as it is, it would, in some climates, be an incredible danger to the person in the house
Balsam Fir resin is used a lot for its healing properties. My aunt calls her tree "My Medicine Tree" and if you get a cut or scrape, she sends you out to pop a blister on its bark and you rub the sap into the cut or scrape. they heal faster than just about any other treatment out there.
Also helps clear sinuses when you eat the contents of those little blisters. :) I really like balsam trees. A tree-cutter I hired last year couldn’t tell balsam trees. He needed to cut one in the area he was working in. I saved all the branches and dried them out and made a lot of balsam pillows. Boy, do they smell sweet. My grandma used to make balsam bags. I sleep with one like she did.
@deannesanville5576
Nice and soft needles...!
In my youth (many years ago) we water proofed our wood skis with pine tar. Used a propane torch to carefully heat the tar as you wiped it off driving the tar into the wood. Loved that smell, still brings back great memories every time I smell pine tar. We still use it on horse hooves.
Makes a good base for waxing skiis.
Awesome! Fyi when putting a mason jar in a pot like that if you line the bottom with Mason lid rings it will A: help stabilize the jar, so it doesn't tip when it starts to boil, and B: decrease the chance of the jar cracking, which can happen sometimes when it's touching the bottom of the pan even when it's in water.
If you wanna get real fancy, you can buy a silicone mat that's designed for that purpose.
Cheers!
what about making a bord to sit on the pot, and screw the jar into it so it hangs there solid without having to worry about anything?
Or use a stainless steel mixing bowl. They balance nicely and float in the water.
@jacob.naturbergor marbles to center it and keep it there. Is going to be a bit louder once the simmering starts.
You can grind the charcoal you made into dust and use it for your pigment.
The tree with the injury that went nearly to the top was a victim of a lightning strike.
I know that because about 25 years ago,I was about 40 yards away from an old,probably 150 year old ,Longleaf Pine,that took a lightning shot!
We were picking splinters out of our asses for several days. The tree,we thought it would die within a year.
But it is still standing tall. It has a massive scar,that goes from the ground,up to about 50 feet or higher.
Its very healthy,and it produces seedlings. We carefully take them,and transplant them. And do our best to nuture them,and help them grow!
Longleaf Pine trees were almost logged to extinction here in Alabama. They are a slow growing tree. But,to me,they are the Most beautiful of the pines!!
So I do whatever I can,to help them. I want them to grow. I want to see my home state covered with majestic,Longleaf Pines,as it was 200 years ago!
True - while not a pine, we had a several hundred year old oak on our property line near the front. My sister brought home a barn kitten that had her first litter shortly after she ‘acquired’ her. One of them had a birth defect of an underdeveloped leg. One Labor Day weekend that kitten was laying in our neighbor’s yard about 25’ from the base of the tree. Lightning struck the tree about 30’ up and blew off a strip of bark down to the ground and along one of the surface roots. It left a burn mark along the ground all the way to the kitten and left a burn circle where the cat had been. The kitten crawled its way to the front porch and died there. That scar was in that trunk for years until the people that bought the property from my parents decided they wanted the tree gone and chopped it down. Don’t know how much they got for it, but the top of the stump was better than 5’ in diameter…
@TracyG713maybe try to secure a plot of land, any size, and get it planted and make it a trust that will stay that way.
Life goals, huh!?
Thanks for sharing your joy here😊
the pine tar for the horses is used when putting on winter shoes or on an injured hoof, with a rubber pad between the shoes and the hoof, and tow (flax or hemp fibre) packed into the hoof to cure thrush or heal an abscess. The wadding is soaked with the pine tar. Or, after the foot is trimmed, either shod or bare, the tar is brushed on the frog, and the outside of the hoof. Always loved this stuff, old-timey farriers still use it
My understanding it was common in shearing sheds too (NZ and Aus anyways). 🐑
Thanks, I have 3 horses & my farrier talked about turpentine for their hooves in Florida rainy season. I like the idea of trying pine tar instead.
This stuff is awesome and my Papa taught me how to make and use this several years ago. If you add roughly a 1/4 cup of hardwood sifted ash to this it will make it even better and prevent fungi growth if you're not wanting to burn the wood first.
Smart!! Shift that PH alkaline!
Clarification needed. “If you’re not wanting to burn the wood first”?
@deannesanville5576 32:26 pay attention
@deannesanville5576 burning the surface of the wood is a valid way to prevent stuff from growing on it, but it's quite the project as the burning must be slow and controlled - otherwise you'd just be using it as firewood
I hope you comprehend how blessed you are to have a stable family and property/tools/resources to explore new things in the way you are doing it. You're already super wealthy if you never made another video. You're set for success just keep doing it. Good job !!
So so rare in this world
Wow, I love it! You not only get the pine tar, but also a bunch of charcoal/biochar, making two valuable products for all of your efforts. In addition to the pine tar, if you break up the charcoal into smaller pieces and dump it into a barrel of fermented compost tea, the tea and microbes within it will soak into the pores of the charcoal, inoculating it with soil life and plant nutrients. Then mix the whole slurry in with your compost and you'll have an excellent fertility addition to add to the soil in your garden or that around your berries or orchard trees!
I'm glad you mentioned the precaution about burning a galvanized (zinc) container, and avoiding smoke. Welders avoid welding galvanized because they say it can make them very sick. Good video!
Dude on that ladder at 1:28 is asking for trouble.
Ah, memories,…. Gone, from landing on his head…
Nah
I love that he knew it too
Dude is a NINJA
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Trouble here.. you called?
4:02 lightning 🌩
Always be careful with your chainsaw around heavy sap / pitch filled wood. I've seen enough logging shows where it atomizes and gets into the engine and the chainsaw can burst into flames... even just the friction can start the wood on fire just from cutting.
What are some precautions that one should take when approaching this?
@andrewb138
Likely keep the dust blown out with air pressure tank, esp from around the muffler...!
We have 33 acres mixed wood with Balsam Fir, White Pine, Spruce, Larch and hardwoods. I'm going on a hunt for pine tar.
I’m so fricken jealous! 33 acres of mixed woodland? - I’d be in heaven.
That little dude is living a grand life. Well done.
I have 2 large Norway Spruces in the front yard, and they've been a favorite for all sorts of woodpeckers... Downy, Hairy, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, Red-bellies, and possibly some Pileated woodpeckers over the years. During Covid I did some woodworking finishing experiments and absolutely went bonkers when I learned about how conifer resin works, I even have a mini crock pot to mix my resin, oil, beeswax, and other things and it's a lot of fun to learn how they all work together! I used a spruce-resin enhanced paste-wax of beeswax and walnut oil on my leather shoes before the big northeastern snowstorm and the snow just refused to stick to it! Also, if you wax shoes in the winter, make sure to keep them warmed by the fire for good penetration!
Save all that biochar for your garden. Chickens love it too.
3:40 That looks like lightning damage.
You can stop your jar bouncing around in the heating pot by placing something under the jar to separate it from the bottom of the pot.
Wire mesh, loose coins etc.
Great video, and you're truly blessed to have such a fine wife and son!
Pine tar has natural anti-microbial/fungal compounds in it and doesn't need anything else added if protecting wood is the end game. I know a lot of people talk about adding pure linseed oil to the mix, but I'm a devout separatist at heart and can't bring myself to do that. The way I see it, since the linseed oil is a "drying" oil and forms a hard barrier when exposed to air, it's actually contradictory to add it to the pine tar because you want the protective compounds in the pine product to be able to sink way down deep into the wood. Logcabinlooms did a short video where he showed a solid inch of penetration of the pine goodness into an oak 6x6 after it'd been coated twice in a year. I don't believe you can get that same level of penetration if you include the linseed oil because it's constantly getting more and more solid, thus closing off passages into the wood.
To my thinking, it's better to make a very thin mix of pine tar and turpentine, more turps than tar, so that you can really sink that down into the wood. After a couple coats of that as a primer, then you can add your linseed oil as a top coat where it will polymerize on the surface and protect the exterior against water intrusion, etc. This allows the pine compounds to almost be trapped inside the wood by the linseed oil.
Anyhow, that's what I do with my pine tar. As expensive as it is to purchase, or time consuming to make at home, being able to stretch out your stores is fairly important. 70% turpentine to 30% pine tar makes a good general-purpose blend for wood protection, especially when you refresh things every year. All of my smithing hammers and gardening tools get annual treatments with the pine tar, and they seem to last a goodly while.
Also, the thinner the mix, the lighter the color, and the better a paint it makes if you add some natural ochres or oxides as a colorant.
Keep up the great work.
Excellent comment.
Thank you for the knowledge and thinking share.
Have you ever considered setting a can of tar, maybe with turps, on a wood burner with handles soaking?
I've done this with used motor oil a few times in locations that I'll not be handling. Like where the wood handle is up near a hammer head or a handle for a rake while it's detached, but ends up under the metal mostly.
I'm not interested in having my hands on petrol treated wood, but the far ends, just fine.
But the hot oil penetrates nicely.
I've had to work a handle to reduce diameter of one handle i hot soaked, and never uncovered anywhere that hadn't been penetrated.
The top of the wood burner, you couldn't keep your hand on it for one while second, and I let coast all night.
The can I use is like a small coffee can, maybe a pint, but it would eventually get hot enough to not want to keep my finger tip in it after a couple handful of seconds. So maybe a few hundred degrees.
But I start stuff in that can either early in the day in the workshop and can watch it all day, or start it at night and just let it all coast.
If the top of a woodburner is too hot for comfort to have a can full of oil on it, you can just add a thin brick, or some thick metal, like scrap brake rotor and then add the can. The items directly on top will reduce and disburse the heat nicely and be much cooler to touch.
Anyhow.
I hope you try the hot oil sometime!
Or hot tar rather!!
I will be😊
Cheers!!~
🌲🔥🪓🪵
I will
@RedCoalsSweatSouls I've not tried heating it, yet. I've thought about it, but it seems like a lot of work to go through for not much gain. If I was doing handles as part of a production like, I could see it possibly speeding up the process and driving the pine tar deeper into the wood, but even that's iffy. I just tarred the handles on three garden tools that desperately needed it, and simply painting the thinned tar on seemed more than enough. I had to let them sit in the sun for a few days, but the tar/turp soaked in decently enough.
@threeriversforge1997 not much work at all if you're using a wood burner already.
Simply place can of goop into burner and add wood desiring to preserve, remove when content : )
Entire long leaf pine forests were farmed for ship building in Pinder County North Carolina
The strong smell you noticed when you opened the commercial version is in part the trapped gases you allowed to burn, this highly volatile fraction and its outgases can be lit off by match strike from 3 feet away in a still area, if enclosed when that happens, disaster!
It makes me happy you use old drywall screw containers. They're so nice and heavy and it irritates me they just get tossed.
I grew up with Wrights coal tar soap ❤
Another thing worth to mention is that the *QUALITY* of the wood extracted in the old days is way, way much better than the quality of the wood they harvest and sell us nowadays.
It have to do with growing spam time and how the wood is "dense" compared to the ones they grow nowadays.
The trees they grow nos is optimized to have a fast grow (thus the tree rings are fatty, almost if there is "air" inside it.). Those burn fast and warp a lot.
Thank you for being you, trying and showing us. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
A little dirt in your pine tar ain't never hurt nobody! Lol
I wish we have more pines here in the tropics.
Love how you care for the trees even when harvesting the sap.
When heating glass jars in pot of water, put a kitchen towel or thick wash cloth under the jar in the pot, making sure to level it so jar stands evenly. When water starts to boil, the jar will not tip over-it's an old canning tip.
Fermented persimmon juice was/is also used on wood and steel to prevent corrosion and rot. ✌
"Not as much in there as I hoped". Mate, you got like a 30%-40% yield or something like that. It's a super good end result. How much tar did you expect to be in that wood?
Pine sap also works great as soldering flux
That's something new to know
What? That's crazy! This was not on my bingo card. Thanks for sharing
Came here to add this! You can also mix with isopropyl to dilute and put in a syringe or cleaned out marker as an applicator.
NEVER use a random "redsauce jar" on a stove top. Even on simmer, I've had the glass randomly shatter. ALWAYS use something rated for heat, like pyrex glass, ceramic, metal, etc.
My husband has been a “fire starter” since childhood!😂 He actually worked for the Forestry Service, as a fire fighter. Whenever any needs a fire, my husband is the man to call! He understands how to build a fire, proper care & safety.
heads up that essential oils aren’t ideal for salves, they can be an irritant and sensitivity can increase with use. they’re not always a problem but they can be unpredictable in terms of which ones produce a reaction in which people. great vid tho!
Gotta use them very lightly. Tea tree and citrus oils will burn ya
Boiled linseed oil is similar
It has chemicals added. I won’t use boiled. They always give things benign-sounding names so people won’t know what they really do to them. “Pressure-treated” wood. “Boiled” linseed oil.
@deannesanville5576there's boiled and there's "boiled". The true boiled is great. The ones with additives not so much.
3:48 that’s probably from a lightning strike
This is incredible. And it's FREE knowledge transfer. Thank you Dylan 👊🏼
Appreciate that✊
24:40 Always trust a mother’s instincts.
Yup and was proven true at 24:52.
Do this with the birch and you will have resin needed to make the russian leather that no one makes any more. build a mound, inside put a tightly packed pail, surround the sides and top of the closed pail with logs, seal the whole thing, punch a few side holes and one in the top middle, light the fire from the sides, monitor it for a slow, HOT char, the bottom of the pail should have a hole with a drain mechanism downward and then angled to the bottom and outside of the mound, with another pail that will catch the resin. When it stops flowing, you're done.
3:50 Lived outside Williston, FL in the 70s - 90s on an 80 acre horse farm. It was of course mostly pasture, but there was about a 5 acre part that was still wooded with long needle pines. And a few still had slashes and the remnants of tin tar buckets nailed to them. Was fascinating.
3:45 that lil guy was hit by lightning
Just bought some Kirby’s Stockholm Pine tar for a Pacific Madrone and Black Locust Picnic table. Have a gallon of Bickmore Pine Tar I’ve been using with boiled linseed oil on burned Doug fir for different outdoor home projects.
More baby! Cute little guy.
You measure like I do, and you pour like I do, you're my kind of guy. Also, thanks for the information you provide.
This was the first video of yours I watched. When you collected those nuggets of pine tar I was trying to imagine how good it smelled. I know more about fatwood now than I did a half hour ago. I've seen other videos where guys got it from roots and stumps, but I didn't know to look for trees that died before being cut down. That must give the resin time to settle down by gravity. I remember my dad using salve or something with pine tar in it decades ago.
10:24 After a tornado came through I have a dozen of these on my property... I guess the plan will be to pull out all of the stumps with a backhoe.
Now that you know what it smells like a treat: at least in three different contexts throughout history we have a mention of this being used for, essentially, styling hair, and I'm aware of one referring to its use on moustache.
What a refreshing channel! Lucky to have found you here.
@1:37 Did anyone else get Riven/Myst vibes?
Great video! I've used pine tar soap for years.
13:15 you should also avoid galvanized steel for this. A lot of people seem to be fine using it in well-ventilated places, but it still poses a health risk.
Edit: Seems you mentioned this problem yourself in the video, but the wikipedia page for those who want to know what I'm talking about is Metal Fume Fever, though do your own research, ask a doctor, etc., this is just a starting point to understand why I'm saying to avoid mixing galvanized steel and fire.
I was kinda impressed when you let your little one handle his journey (mostly) by himself. I feel like it's moments where parents ease back slightly but still keep an eye on things where kids make the most growth. That's some experience moving by himself, strengthening muscles, picking delicate things up, etc. I get the feeling this kind of environment will be beneficial for him.
I love the smell of pine resin - in fact any tree resin pretty much, Prunus genus is nice too!
I use pine tar soap. Good for the skin.
I love it.
I’m a log home builder and rustic furniture maker. I tried pine tar, it’s pretty cool and the wood smells great, but it’s kind of a hassle. I saw a video from a guy who’s more rustic than me who was sealing his cabins with pine tar. His mix was heavier on the tar and he was heating the tar covered wood up with a torch so the tar would melt and soak into the wood better.
How can he melt the tar without igniting it?
@4xdblackkeep moving the torch fast enough that it doesn’t ignite the tar but slow enough to melt the tar, and also keep the torch far enough back that it’s only getting a more spread out heat and not a direct flame.
@RT-jv3su sounds like a heat gun would do a better job of that then.
@4xdblackfor small stuff a heat gun would probably work great. If I were going to attempt to seal a log cabin like that (which I wouldn’t) I would probably use a large propane torch like the ones you would use to shrink wrap a boat.
I’m off grid and as natural as possible, so I think about a fire pit with a barrel or half barrel on it to heat it. You could even do a double boiler situation where the barrel is filled with water and the pine tar is in a smaller container floating on the water in the half barrel.
NC is home, I can smell that pine through the screen 😅
For natural darkening you can soak black walnut hulls in terpentine to make a dye and mix it into your tar extract.
Very interesting especially for the bonfire setup, it's as if pyrolysis had a step 0, starting it but preventing the cook-off and subsequent fractionation that's needed to further purify and separate things, I honestly didn't expect it to be that simple after seeing how crazy those setups get.
Would juniper work?
Great video
Thank you very much.
Great stuff! White Birch tar is also v good.
I don't know why but I was surprised when you opened that field notes book because I have one exactly like that
Bet Pine knots would work very well. It is what is left when the old pine rots away and leaves rosin soaked cores. We used them to start fires because it is potent
An excellent lesson.
I love that “honey pine” finish on your wood sample. I have a couple of pine furniture pieces. One started out as a honey pine finish, the other was a much lighter tone. Pine naturally darkens over time so after 20 years the light one now has a warm honey color and the other one is a slightly richer tone.
I use a similar mix. 1 part pine tar. 1 part organic tung oil, 1 part turpentine. I try to apply it in direct sun so it soaks in better. Has worked and preserved wood for years.
cool idea 👍👍👍
GREAT video. This is another thing that I wish I had done when I was younger and able to. WONDERFUL demonstrated information here. God bless and keep you and your beautiful little family, Dylan!
(from Wayne, 81, NW Arkansas)
thanks! appreciate the details on the bbq process, to know when it's produced most of the resin
5:41
Put a trivet or even a small wash cloth in the bottom of the pan to avoid your jar bouncing around!
sick channel bro
Dylan ….thanks this was a super cool project I will defiantly try it out!
You might try simmering a batch with water and consistent stirring. Sometimes some of the pyrolysis byproducts are more polar and will dissolve into the water layer.
You are a handy young man.
Don't worry about the pigmentation of painted wood..it will turn completely black in the sun in 1-2 years.
Should have left top pan on until it was completely cooled it was more then likely dripping still
add black walnut dye to get it dark first then do your pine tar if you want dark
Hey, what a great instructional video! I didn't know about this process at all and I am about to start a sho sugi ban project. I have a lot of pines on the property but will likely purchase the tar. However I will start extracting resin for salves. Glad I came across your work!
I've been wondering about this! I noticed my picnic table wasn't weathering where the sappy bits came from the knots.
Man, what a fun way to live. Thanks. Subscribed
Try used motor oil. Beautiful color.
I painted 2 houses with wood tar thinned out with turpentine. it sucked to work with and I smelled of smoke for weeks, but it is undeniable a good alternative
Don't know why this was recommended but I watched the whole thing. Had some good times building fires in rural Alabama in my youth. Only thing you were missing was 3-4 good buddies and a case of cheap beer.
i put red food coloring in mine dark red finish looks amazing!
Super interesting! That’s a lot of work. Our farm the old barns are stained using old motor oil. I tried to touch up spots, but really need a sprayer or something versus wiping it on because it’s more weathered rough wood now
not only pine tar was uesd but also regular tar like the ting in asfalt if it was available.
That raw resin, molten and sifted out of debris, can later be pulverized in a mortar and mixed with alcohol:
You get soldering flux.
Same resin, mix it with charcoal → you've hot glue.
Mix it with glycerin or beeswax and use it to soak a porous flammable material: a Lovely firestarter wick.
It is an amazing material.
Really high-calibre video sir! Thank you!
Love and Respect for trees is pure decency. 🌲
We just coated our new house with black pine tar, stuff is badass
Lavender oil also has healing properties.
Does my heart good seeing young couple raise theirr baby in such a pure beautiful way.
Thank you for the lesson on how to get the pine tar. I use to go in the woods looking for rich lighter pine. The Pune had almost petrified and when cut, it smelled soooo good.