Natural glue

[Rokas]

Does anyone of you knows how to make glue in woods from natural materials? It would be good if those glue would be quite strong and water-resistant if it's possible.. I would be very grateful if someone could tell me this recipe..

[trax]

You can work pine and spruce sap into a strong, water-resistant adhesive. Heat it up and spread it around, I've used it to patch a canoe leak and native people used it for sealing lodges and sealing birchbark canoes way back when.

[crashdive123]

I've used heated pine sap to repair a tarp. Worked fairly well.

[LadyTrapper]

Hmmmhmmmmm.... I could maybe us this on the kids blow up water toys and floaties as the patches NEVER work.Thanks guys!

[crashdive123]

Hmmmhmmmmm.... I could maybe us this on the kids blow up water toys and floaties as the patches NEVER work.Thanks guys!

Be careful applying heated sap to a vinyl floatie - might melt it.

[michbowguy]

pine resin, pine pitch,fish skin glues,fish bladder glues, birch gum glue...what would you like to know??

[wareagle69]

hmmm that makes me think i wonder if i heated up /melted my rosin from my bullriding gear that would work eh i have white and black rosin well there ya go a project for this weekend.

[crashdive123]

pine resin, pine pitch,fish skin glues,fish bladder glues, birch gum glue...what would you like to know??

Don't be bashful - let er rip.

[wareagle69]

him and fvr are gonna git along sunm good

[crashdive123]

Was thinking the same thing.


I wonder why nobody has mentioned horses on this thread?

[wareagle69]

easy now mister the wife reads this over my shoulder.

[crashdive123]

Ahhh. That's why.

[Rokas]

If glue made from pine sap could seal opening in the bottom of birch bark cup? won't it crumble after using it for a while?

[crashdive123]

Rokas - there are a lot of "recipies" for making adhexives with pine sap and other natural materials. A common name for the ones made with pine sap is pine pitch resin. Here's an instructional video where he uses pine sap, charcoal, and dried horse dung. Some will use animal fat or just dried grass in place of the poo (may make it more appealing depending on the application). In addition to adhesives, mixtures similar to this have been used to waterproof wooden structures (boats, cabins) as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4RgB...eature=related

[Gray Wolf]

Adhesives

Natural adhesives have been known to be in existence since ancient Egypt. Egyptian carvings dating back 3,300 years depict the gluing of a thin piece of veneer (a thin layer of fine wood used in covering the surface of cheaper wood or in making plywood) to what appears to be a plank of sycamore. Flour paste was used to bond together papyrus fibers that were then used as fabrics. Beeswax, tree pitches (a dark sticky substance made from trees) and bitumen (a natural substance that contains hydrocarbons. i.e. coal) were used as protective coatings and adhesives. Egg whites were used to bind manuscripts at one time and wooden objects were bonded with glues made from fish, horn, and cheese. During the 18th century, the technology of animal and fish glues advanced. In the 19th century rubber and nitrocellulose based cements were introduced.

Adhesive materials are made up of polymers. Polymers are huge molecules, or macromolecules, that are formed by the linking of thousands of simpler molecules known as monomers. When a polymer is formed the chemical reaction that takes place is called polymerization. Polymerization and adhesive bond formation take place at the same time creating the means to keep surfaces together.

It has recently been discovered that the oldest known adhesive in the world is a glue that dates back to around 8,200 years ago.

Early Hunting and Gathering Tools

An assortment of prehistoric tools provides evidence of the hunting and gathering methods of early peoples. Slabs of bark were often used to gather nuts and berries and functioned as crude dishes or bowls (top left). Reproductions of fishing tackle and arrows believed to have been used around 8000 BC are displayed on the lower left. Recovered tools for digging and cutting (right) are shown with recreated wooden handles. The heads of the adzes are made from flint, as is the fire-starter shown below them.

Carbon-14 dating indicates that these Neolithic people who didn't even make pottery may have been using glue thousands of years before the Egyptians. Arie Nissenbaum is a geochemist from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He recently analyzed some material found inside a Nahal Hemar cave, in a dry region southwest of the Dead Sea. The material that Arie Nessenbaum analyzed was first believed to be asphalt because of its color and the site's proximity to the largest asphalt deposits in Israel. In fact, the material was found to be a collagen, a fibrous protein taken from animal skin, cartilage, bone and sinew. This is still the main ingredient in some types of glue.

The people who would have made the glue lived around the time of the agricultural revolution and fossils of wild ibex and goats have been found in the region. "By Stone Age standards, these people had mastered at least one type of advanced technology. At this early period, humans had already become familiar with the use of collagen as an adhesive material." (Arie Nissenbaum, Science News, Nov 1). About 4,000 years ago, Egyptians used gelatinous collagen to glue together wooden furniture. At least 1,500 years ago some North American Indian groups used collagen adhesives to make archery bows. Even further back in evolutionary history evidence has been found that indicates glue-like materials were being used to attach handles to tools 36,000 years ago.

Two stones dating back to at least 36,000 years ago have traces of a sticky black substance that was once used to attach them to a handle. In a chemical analyses the glue-like material was identified as bitumen (defined above). "These new data suggest that Stone Age people had greater technical ability than previously thought, as they were able to use different materials to produce tools," said Eric Boeda of the University of Paris. The location of the site is in the Syrian Desert known as Umm el Tlel. The chemical consistency of the bitumen indicates that it was heated and applied to the implements as a glue.

A Northwestern North American culture called the Yakutat Tlingit made a waterproof paste out of burned clam shells, salmon eggs, seal brains or seal blood and fishskins. They often used this for caulking boxes. A nice passage from a book entitled Under Mount Saint Elias: the history and culture of the Yakutat Tlingit by Frederica de Laguna describes the following process;

"They make a nice glue out of fish skin. My uncle used to make it. They used dried fish, tear the meat off. Scrape the outside off, throw the scales away. Heat the skin up in warm water. It gets nice and soft. Then put it between two pieces of wood and tie them together, and it holds them when it gets dry. My uncle used salmon skin. Native glue is fishskin. Boil it till the water gets away and it gets sticky. They use it to glue things together, long time ago. They used the skin of any kind of fish, either sockey or silver is best. They give more juice."

Others believed that halibut skin was the best to use for glue because whenever you touch those skins they were always very "gooey."

Natural adhesives are primarily of animal or vegetable origin. Animal glues are prepared from mammalian collagen, the primary protein of skin, bone and muscle. When treated with hot water the collagen slowly becomes soluble and the end result is either gelatin or glue. By dissolving a protein from milk in an alkaline solvent one can make casein glue. Casein glues were often used to glue together wood. Today it is used to improve the adhering characteristics of paints and coatings.

Serum albumen, a component in blood obtainable from either fresh animal blood or dried soluble blood powder was also used as a glue when added with alkali. Today glue products made from blood are used in the plywood industry. Corn, wheat, potatoes or rice contain starch and dextrin that are considered vegetable adhesives. Starch and dextrin extracts are soluble in water and are obtainable from plant sources all over the world. Today they are used in corrugated board, packaging and as a wallpaper adhesive. Gums are another adhesive that can be extracted from trees. Usually it is extracted from a tree that has been wounded. Agar is a colloid from marine plants that can be extracted by hot water and then purified by freezing it. Algin is obtainable from seaweed.

Author: Andrea Delarosa

[michbowguy]

pine resin;
collect dried up and or sticky "globs" of sap,probably will have bugs,bark etc. in it...
put it in a taller soup can..non plastic lined and take a small finish nail and make a bunch of small holes in bottom...
now place that can in a bigger cofee can...sort of a double boiler effect...
then place over heat source.
OUTSIDE. AS FLARE UPS HAPPEN ALL THE TIME!
fumes are super flamable.

heat up till you hear cracklin and poppin.
smoke will rise from the larger can and the smaller can...
this is good,keep face out of smoke!
take a stick and press firmly on top of pine resin clump in smaller can, to push the resin out the small holes..
keep doing this until you think that most of pitch is melted.
take pliers and slowly remove larger can off the heat source.
remove smaller can and let drain the resin drips..
now let the small can sit upside down so the heated "ball of junk is now a "super firestarter" do not throw away..even if you do not use as fire starter , you will want to throw this ball of "pine junk" on your nite fire to keep bugs away!

take large can back to heat source and heat til boil.
take off heat source.let cool.heat up to a boil. cool down again.
you are now "tempering the resin"
while it is cooling for the last time keep mixing the batch with a small twig,sharpened at the end that is in the pitch...[i will get at this later!]
mix until it starts to get thick and gooey..now you work fast!
scrape up as much as possible on the sharpened end of stick and it should have the consistency of a thick taffy...remember its still HOT!
i usually lick my opposite hand to work the "goob" into a more consstant "goob" elongated down the stick,and i make sure the sharpend side of stick pokes thru...

when you make a "resin stick" with this and put it in the sun or hot possibles bag or whatever, it WONT TURN STICKY. it will stay hard [and brittle]
if your pitch resin stick gets "sticky"...retemper once more,and twist it back onto stick.

when you use it...LIGHT THE SHARPENED END OF STICK!!!!
now you have a "slow match" of sorts and with one hand controll the amount of flame the end of resin gets and you can direct the flow with one hand, while holding the arrow point,kinfe handle,etc you are working on!!!!

ok..now some uses for resin.

i like it as a instant bandaid, as you melt it on a cut and its natural antibiotic properties help greatly and the sap stops the bleeding,and stays on even when submerged in water!
i use it to "set" flint heads in the notch so they spin true as it dries fast and brittle and this gives me a stable platform to wrap with sinew and finish off with a pine "pitch", a more flexible concoction i will get at next!

im done typin for now!
ill let you know how to make pine pitch tomorrow or so...if yer interested.

jamie

[michbowguy]

ifn ya want to get primal you can use two mussel shells as boilers one with holes one not, heat up two rocks and create a river of sap falling into a mussel shell or bark plate...but cans work good too!

[crashdive123]

Good stuff Michbowguy - thanks.

[Rick]

So, michbow, if I'm walking along and find a nice ooze of pine tar on a tree can I collect that and use it in my fire at night to keep insects at bay? Do you know what is in the pine resin that bugs dislike? Finally, is there a particular species of pine that works better than others? I love learning stuff.

[michbowguy]

rick,
im no scientist.
and the elders who taught me werent even high school educated.

im guessing the same substance that makes turpintine..."turpine"
is derived from the pine,white,yellow,scotch,all pines..

and that when its heated,the smoke that bellows is SO FLAMABLE..i believe that this is a natural by-product of turpine biend boiled...

but this is ONLY A GUESS.....BUT I DO KNOW IT WORKS!

i should do a little write up about the pine and its uses.
if you dont even want to mess with glues and stuff, at least grab pine cones and throw them in your pack!

this is life giving stuff man.
you remove the pine nuts and boil them for some good eats...

the nuts if too bitter chomp them up into "peanutbutter" and smear on triggers of traps for bait!

you throw the cones on big fires, just one at a time and the no seums go away!

and when they start to come back..throw a couple more on.

on your smoldering coals during the night or in a soup or bean can make a small fire with a pine cone only and start it on fire....it will burn fast at first but get it to a glowing hot coal, and keep it close by your head and the mosquitoes wont come near..just throw a couple on during the night,one at a time and you will finaly get some good rest.

the needles are great to chew on and prevent scurvy.

the broth from pine needle tea is very good,and also is good soup base for red squill,and wabbit.

list goes on and on.

got ta love the pines man. got ta.
jamie