Hey, went out looking for wood for gunstock clubs, ball headed clubs and adzes today in a new area and didn't find much to my liking, then stumbled across a nice patch of spruce forest with gobs of pitch all over the trees!  Not having come equipped to carry pitch I mcgyvered a container using a single piece of birch bark, (from a silver birch, it was very very stiff and split easy, probably work nice if you soaked it first,) and though I didn't make it pretty I came up with this idea of making two splits on each end along the grain, then cutting two slots for the ends of the splits to tuck into, (would have put them through 2 slots each if I had better bark,) and viola! a 2min. birch bark container for carrying pitch!  You can't see it on the top, but I scraped off a playing card deck sized gob of fresh white pitch as well, guess the sap is starting to run, will be making bark baskets again!

Posted this here as I'm using it for hafting my knives!

  Never thought of that.  I can go out and get some anytime I need it so I have never gone to store it for more than a few months.  I now have to get this mixed up into a semi-soft batch of pitch glue and get some knives made up!  I have quite a few to make.

Bill Skinner wrote on Mar 27^th, 2013 at 11:20am:

I did not make mine. I mostly use Pitch for starting fires. When you light a pile of wood shavings with a small match....
It makes a good torch.
Other uses....
I have a TON of uses for Pine Pitch.
When I make glue sticks, they do not dry out. It is when I store raw pitch(e.g melted into a jar and filtered) it gets dry.

I have some in a can that I melted and strained, then mixed with finely ground charcoal, beeswax and dried and ground rabbit droppings.  That is what I make my glue sticks from, I just keep adding ingrediants to keep the can full.  If your pitch is drying up and getting flaky, it is because you got it too hot when heating to strain.  Add some beeswax, not paraffin, and it will stop from being flaky.  It doesn't take much, just a few shavings.  And when you melt it next time, if your bubbles get larger than a BB, it's too hot.