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

Пікірлер: 36

  • @fvls_2110
    @fvls_2110 Жыл бұрын

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

  • @theforestman
    @theforestman Жыл бұрын

    Interesting videos! Keep doing! A couple of tips: make subtitles built into KZread, 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!

  • @davidc.9758
    @davidc.9758 Жыл бұрын

    Awesome. Thanks for sharing 👍

  • @KHbanjo
    @KHbanjo Жыл бұрын

    He’s back!

  • @MakeItPrimitive

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

    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

    @KHbanjo

    Жыл бұрын

    @@MakeItPrimitive 👍

  • @goofeybutreal4398
    @goofeybutreal439812 күн бұрын

    ❤👍🏿

  • Жыл бұрын

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

  • @MakeItPrimitive

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

    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? :-)

  • Жыл бұрын

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

  • @MakeItPrimitive

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

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

  • @Icemanshoes
    @Icemanshoes Жыл бұрын

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

  • @arthurmanaki7862
    @arthurmanaki7862 Жыл бұрын

    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
    @farrugarrafas3582 Жыл бұрын

    Ensina a fazer esculpidor de pedra para madeira

  • @gradenspeece
    @gradenspeece Жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @gradenspeece

    @gradenspeece

    Жыл бұрын

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

  • @MakeItPrimitive

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @gradenspeece

    @gradenspeece

    Жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

    I just saw that you show your technique in a KZread 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.

  • @noname788
    @noname7888 ай бұрын

    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

    @MakeItPrimitive

    8 ай бұрын

    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

    @noname788

    8 ай бұрын

    @@MakeItPrimitive thank you so much

  • @tompollard6643
    @tompollard6643 Жыл бұрын

    Could you explain the function if the grog please.

  • @MakeItPrimitive

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

    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: kzread.info/dash/bejne/f6t5mLCPl8i6qdY.html 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.

  • @appo1860
    @appo1860 Жыл бұрын

    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

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

    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

    @appo1860

    Жыл бұрын

    @@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

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

    @@appo1860 No problem and same to you!

  • @user-md6cu5vh7m
    @user-md6cu5vh7m10 ай бұрын

    व्हिच ट्री

  • @gradenspeece
    @gradenspeece Жыл бұрын

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

  • @MakeItPrimitive

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

    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.

  • @gradenspeece

    @gradenspeece

    Жыл бұрын

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

  • @gradenspeece

    @gradenspeece

    Жыл бұрын

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

  • @MakeItPrimitive

    @MakeItPrimitive

    Жыл бұрын

    @@gradenspeece 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.

  • @gradenspeece

    @gradenspeece

    Жыл бұрын

    @@MakeItPrimitive Atleast he still had tar!

  • @arthurmanaki7862
    @arthurmanaki7862 Жыл бұрын

    Pleaseeeeeeeeeeee, 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊