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Melting pitch can be a tricky business. A lot can happen between scraping pitch
from a tree and finishing a batch of pitch sticks. After heat has greatly
increased its viscosity, this substance seems to instantly drip onto, run over,
and adhere to materials that you least want to introduce the stickiest of
natural adhesives. Getting the stuff on your skin (especially hairy skin!) is a
veritable scourge, remedied by alternately rubbing wads of bedstraw (Galium sp.)
and clumps of sandy-dirt onto the affected area.
Around here, pitch isn’t found in abundance. In fact, I treasure every single
glistening drop I see. I’m careful to not waste it, which inspires me to find
small, re-usable, energy-efficient (my energy) containers that serve in
collection and melting. Once you use a container to hold or melt pitch, it
becomes forever committed to this purpose.
My area offers no rock to be effectively pecked-and-ground, no clay to pinch
a pot from, but is laden with a seemingly endless supply of seashells. Up here
on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, there are areas on the coast where I’ve
collected 350 large, unbroken shells in 90 minutes, having covered an area under
a quarter-acre. For a person whose lithic technology has barely graduated from
the "Oldowan Bashee" tool tradition, great importance is placed upon the use of
natural, found items as vessels for the preparation of practical amounts of
glue, medicine, tea, and pigment. (A good article by Richard Jamison entitled,
“The Use of Pitch,” can be found in the book, The Best of Woodsmoke: A Manual
of Primitive Outdoor Skills.)
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I chose twenty-five shells from each of the larger species that I could find
and melted pitch in them. To test for longevity, I chose another five shells
from each species and proceeded to melt pitch in each until either the shell
failed or pitch was melted five times. Some shells, like oysters and littleneck
clams, proved reliable enough to use just once. Butter clams demonstrated the
greatest resiliency over the long haul, as did gaper clams to a slightly lesser
extent. As a result of my experience, I would not recommend using cockles and
mussels. Here are the pros-and-cons for each species that I observed throughout
the melting trials.
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Melting pitch in Butter Clam (foreground) and Blue
Mussel shells |
Butter Clams—4% failure rate
+ large/deep
+ thick
+ the most crack-resistant shell-type tested
- a bit difficult to handle with wooden tongs
Gaper Clams—12% failure rate
+ large/deep
+ fairly crack-resistant
- difficult to handle with wooden tongs
Littleneck Clams—20% failure rate
+ fairly crack-resistant
+ easy to handle with wooden tongs
- usually quite small
Pacific Oysters—56% failure rate
- irregularly shaped-shells don’t often sit upright
- difficult to find one with a useful concavity
- difficult to handle with wooden tongs
- becomes very fragile after having been heated
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Blue Mussel shells frequently failed... |
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As did Nuttall's Cockles... |
Nuttall’s Cockles—76% failure rate
and
Blue Mussels—92% failure rate
+ both shell types are large/deep
+ plentiful
+ very easy to handle with wooden tongs
- readily cracks
I give a heartfelt thanks to the Makah Tribe for granting me
special permission to collect shells on their sparkling,
productive shores.
Text and Photos Copyright by Storm
www.stoneageskills.com |
