When you are just carrying a pocket knife into the woods, and you come across that perfect blob of resin, that can be sort of a challenge. Because you don't want to get your SAK all gooey and sticky, of course.
The solution is dead simple of course.
I also improvise a way of transporting your harvest back home.
Spruce, pine and fir and mountain pinion resin has a million of uses. Resin has a lot of medicinal properties. The tree using it to cure wounds in the bark, already hints of its antibacterial, antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties. Traditional uses of pitch salve and resin ointments date back to ancient Egypt:
"oldest accounts of the therapeutic effects of coniferous resin stem from ancient Egypt, where salve prepared from resin was used to treat burns.18,19 In the Nordic countries, especially in Finnish Lapland, ointment prepared from the Norway spruce (P. abies; Fig. 1) resin has been used for centuries to treat acutely and chronically infected wounds, sores, pressure ulcers, punctured abscesses, suppurating burns, onychomycosis, and paronychia.20 Although treatment with resin is an old folkloristic therapy and empirical experience over time has shown the effectiveness of resin treatment, only at the beginning of the twenty-first st century have researchers conducted systematic studies of its effectiveness and mechanisms of action."
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4827294/
But also in the global North, pitch, pitch salve, refined resin ointments and raw resin have been successfully used in the treatment of wounds, skin irritations and ulcers. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6485920_Resin_salve_from_the_Norwegian_spruce_tree_a_'novel'_method_for_the_treatment_of_chronic_wounds)
The medicinal properties are due to a very high content of Terpenoids (which is pretty commonplace, because resin has always been used to make Turpentine and Colophonium, which is a by-product of making Turpentine), mostly Diterpene acid (DRA). There are several clinical studies confirming the success of said traditional applications.
The said Diterpenes also make for the awesome properties as a fire-starting agent, because they are highly flammeable.
Another application of spruce, pine, mountain pinion, and fir resin (or any resinous coniferous plant, actually), is to easily make a glue. When melted with a bit of fat, especially animal fat, and dried manure, it makes for a surprisingly strong bond for e.g. hafting tools. The big advantage over birch pitch is that you could also use the resin unprocessed, as opposed to a rather complex process of destillation of birch bark.
Resin is something every woodsman should know as nature's multifunctional resource.
It is important, though, to harvest sustainbly. Don't hurt the bark. There is no problem if you take what is on the surface, and if you use a wooden spatula, you can not hurt the tree.
That said, I hope to provide you with a recipe for my ointment soon.
All the best, thanks for watching, and take good care!
