Making primitive birch pitch using two pots 🔥

Birch pitch has been on my to-do-list for a long time - not the simple, ineffective method I tried out on my earlier video, but proper pitch production with reasonable yields. For this, I made two specialized vessels out of clay, fired them and then used them four the double vessel method.
0:00 Intro
0:07 Making the vessels
4:11 Gathering birch bark
5:18 Preparations
6:29 Hand drill fire
7:55 Firing
8:32 Results
My video was heavily inspired by this one by Wulf Hein:
- • Birch Bark Pitch
#primitivetechnology #bushcraft

[@fvls_2110]

Really good man! I wish i had this friction fire making skill! Someday, i will...A friendly hug from Brazil!

[@davidc.9758]

Awesome. Thanks for sharing 👍

[@KHbanjo]

He’s back!

[@MakeItPrimitive]

Yeah, it's been a bit. I've been doing lots of interesting stuff in the meantime, though, some of which will show up here sooner or later. You can also follow me on Instagram, if you're so inclined, where I sometimes post smaller stuff in between.

[@KHbanjo]

@@MakeItPrimitive 👍

[@theforestman]

Interesting videos! Keep doing! A couple of tips: make subtitles built into KZbin, so you can translate them into different languages. If you make the video shorter, then it will be much more interesting to watch, I think so. What camera do you shoot video with? Good luck!

[@goofeybutreal4398]

❤👍🏿

Richtig gute Videos machst du! Kein überflüssiges Blabla, genau mein Stil!

[@MakeItPrimitive]

Ich habe deinen Kanal erst vor ein paar Tagen entdeckt und gleich mal wärmstens weiterempfohlen. Sehr interessante Videos! Vielleicht sieht man sich ja mal, bei einem Steinzeittreffen oder so? :-)

@@MakeItPrimitive das wäre super! Albersdorf steht auf dem Plan...

[@MakeItPrimitive]

Bei mir auch. Vielleicht auch Swifterkamp, wenn es die Urlaubssituation zulässt.

[@Icemanshoes]

Wieder ein sehr schönes Video! Viele Grüße aus Hessen:)

[@arthurmanaki7862]

Brother, make a shepherd's sling wirh natural cordage... I wait this in your channel a lot of time ago... Its realy simple to make, make one and show for us your evolution for the shots pleaseeeeee, ☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺

[@farrugarrafas3582]

Ensina a fazer esculpidor de pedra para madeira

[@noname788]

Can you tell me the uses of the tree bark oil? I know its been used as glue but id like to know its other uses in history. I know it can be used as an insect repelent and a form of medicine but in neolithic times did they discover this or was this found much later?

[@MakeItPrimitive]

A paper published in 2019 took a look at a 5700 year-old birch pitch chewing gum from Denmark (so this is pre neolithic). They were able to derive not only the DNA of the woman who chewed it from the material, but her oral microbiome as well. The pathogens she apparently had in her mouth suggest a medical use. (Also, the stuff apparently tastes really disgusting, so it probably wasn't chewed for pleasure.) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6917805/ Apart from this direct evidence, birch pitch had been used since at least 200.000 years. I'm pretty sure its other uses besides glue (especially as a bug repellant) were observed and utilized a very long time ago.

[@noname788]

@@MakeItPrimitive thank you so much

[@gradensbible]

Hey! I was just wondering if you could provide any tips on the hand drill method. I’ve never gotten close enough to an ember and it’s really difficult.

[@gradensbible]

I’ve burnt the wood dust, and lots of smoke emitted.

[@MakeItPrimitive]

Yeah, hand drill is tricky. I hope I never have to rely on it to survive ... I haven't done it for a couple of months and I'm already struggling with it again. Here are a couple of mistakes I have made on this journey so far: - Find suitable wood, otherwise it will be very hard. I started with willow for the hearth board, thinking "willow ist soft wood, so it should work". Yes, willow is soft, but its fibers are very tough. As soon as I switched to lime (linden), it started working for me. Currently my favorite combination is a teasel spindle on a slightly punky poplar hearthboard. - The notch needs to be wide enough to collect enough dust, but not so wide that the spindle can slip out. It shouldn't be too deep, otherwise you'll wear yourself out trying to fill it up and ignite it. The point of the notch should almost reach the center of the drilling hole. - When your dust isn't black, but just brown, it isn't getting hot enough. Producing smoke feels like you're almost there, but unfortunately, there IS such a thing as smoke without a fire ... - Hand drill takes three ingredients: suitable material, skill, and enough stamina. Though to a certain extent an experienced firemaker can partially substitute one with the others.

[@gradensbible]

@@MakeItPrimitive ah okay, I was using sabal palmetto for my hearth board. Not sure about the spindle though. I don’t have many wood types in my location.

[@MakeItPrimitive]

I just saw that you show your technique in a KZbin short. Two ideas based on that: 1) Try drilling in a kneeling position, with the hearth board fixed in place on the ground. This allows you to use the weight of your torso to press down. 2) Practice the "floating" technique, if you haven't already. This is a specific hand movement that is hard to explain but actually pretty easy to do. Some people are able to do the whole drill by floating, but for most it's a good technique to warm up the drill without using a lot of power, and without having to move your hands back to the top.

[@appo1860]

I wonder if you could make some sort of vessel from this tar. It would probably be more durable than a ceramic vessel and also waterproof.

[@MakeItPrimitive]

It has (pre)historically been used as a glue to mend broken pottery. Making a whole pot out of it would be possible, I guess, but it would be a bit wasteful - destilling this small batch took two hours of work, not counting the time to gather the bark and the firewood. Also, such a pot would be watertight, but you couldn't cook in it because it would melt in the heat. But who knows, there might be niche applications for a pitch vessel that I haven't thought of!

[@appo1860]

@@MakeItPrimitive Thank you for the information! I love your work and feel very honored to get a comment from you. Have a beautiful day!

[@MakeItPrimitive]

@@appo1860 No problem and same to you!

[@tompollard6643]

Could you explain the function if the grog please.

[@MakeItPrimitive]

Clay shrinks as it dries, and does so again during the firing. Unless a pot dries and heats up perfectly evenly, some parts will shrink faster than others, leading to internal stresses and thus cracks. Adding non-shrinking material to the clay reduces this shrinkage. Have a look at this video by Cody's Lab to see a drastic example: kzbin.info/www/bejne/g6ioZ4GMnMqHr9U Now, the clay I am using doesn't shrink anywhere as much and I have been able to make pots without adding any temper to it. But since this vessel's purpose is to go into the fire again and again, I figured it would be a good idea to do it anyway. Apart from the superficial spall that occurred during the initial firing, it has so far survived several birch tar firings without any cracking.

[@user-md6cu5vh7m]

व्हिच ट्री

[@gradensbible]

Hahaha the last time I did this I forgot to fire my pottery 😅

[@MakeItPrimitive]

Well, how did that turn out? I was actually thinking about trying this at one point. My guess is that it could work, but probably not great, since pottery needs to be heated up slowly for firing, but making birch tar seems to work best when you turn up the heat quickly.

[@gradensbible]

@@MakeItPrimitive not well, unfortunately, the tar leaked out and made a big mess haha

[@gradensbible]

It also could have gone that way because of how porous the clay was!

[@MakeItPrimitive]

@@gradensbible That makes sense, I think. Unfired clay is probably a lot more porous than fired pottery, so I guess the tar would just seep through the pores and escape. This happened to a friend that had his pot in the same fire as mine last year. It had a very narrow, barely crack, fissure, which nevertheless caused a lot of the tar to leak out and burn off. He ended up with much less tar than I did, despite his pot being three times the volume of mine.

[@gradensbible]

@@MakeItPrimitive Atleast he still had tar!

[@arthurmanaki7862]

Pleaseeeeeeeeeeee, 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊