What is Pine Pitch Salve?
Pine pitch salve is an herbal healing salve made from the sticky resin from pine trees and some species of spruce and fir. This potent pine resin salve is easy to make.
Pine resin (not pine sap) is the thick white-to-cream sticky substance that pines, spruce, and firs secrete when they get damaged, creating a stress response.
The resin (or pitch) protects the damage site, preventing fluid loss, insect infestation, and fungal or bacterial infection. It essentially flushes and seals the tree's wound, creating a barrier against further damage.
Pitch Salve Benefits
Pitch salve has been used for thousands of years because of its antiseptic, astringent, and antibacterial. It also works as a drawing salve, helping to draw out deep-seated splinters and impurities and pus from boils, abscesses, and wounds. The oleoresin from pine acts as a counter-irritant, stimulating circulation, inflammation, and the local immune response to quicken the body's healing process. And because it's anti fungal and antibacterial and acts as a barrier, it helps prevent infection from setting in, making pine resin salve a great choice for applying to minor wounds, scrapes, and grazes.
While the pine pitch itself is a counter-irritant, blended with the right kind of oil in a salve recipe, the action is gentle, and the additional oil helps to nourish and soothe the skin.
Pine salve is also an excellent natural alternative to Vicks Vaporous. It's a natural chest rub. The volatile terpenes in the pine pitch salve acts like a respiratory decongestant when rubbed on the chest, and with no potentially harmful petroleum-based products.
This multi-purpose herbal salve also has a warming action that's great for easing discomfort from sore muscles and painful joints. Just rub the salve in where the pain is, and let it get to work. Because it is also stimulating, it helps to increase blood flow to the affected area, easing pain and aiding healing. It can be used safely on humans as well as animals.
How to Use Pine Pitch Salve
Apply a thin layer of pine salve to cuts, abrasions, and minor wounds. Leave a thin layer to act as a barrier and air healing.
For splinters or, in an emergency situation where you have a boil or abscess and can't get immediate medical attention, you can apply a poultice of pine salve to the affected area to draw out the impurities.
For splinters, apply a generous helping of pine salve and cover with a clean bandage. Leave overnight to draw out the splinter. It reduces pain and swelling, helping the body heal itself.
Pine is broadly antimicorbrial. It is warming, stimulating, and increases blood flow. It is valuable as a chest rub for chest congestion. It can help with localized pain, inflammation, and infection. It's also beneficial for old injuries and chronic inflammation. It is safe to take internally for sore throat and congestion.
And for something super cool: You can use pine salve as a fire starter. If you're camping and struggling to get a fire started, dab a fairly generous amount onto toilet paper and you've got instant fire starter. The pitch in the salve is highly flammable, so its a great emergency starter.
Sourcing Pine Pitch Resin to Make Salve
The white pine tree is a solid choice for making pine salve but you can also use many other pine trees including, red pine, pitch, jack, ponderosa, spruce, and fir.
You'll get the same benefits but you'll find that each pine resin has a different scent, some more pine-like, others earthier, or muskier.
Douglas Fit trees exude this resin, which varies in consistency from the thickness of honey when fresh to almost as solid as a rock when dried out, to protect and seal their wounds. Pry chunks off with a knife or scrap the ooze into a jar. Don’t take pitch directly from an active wound or you will hinder the tree’s natural mechanism of healing and protection. Instead take pitch that has flowed down below the damaged part of the trunk.
When you are out collecting, fill the glass jars with pine resin and place the lid on to hold in the terpinene vapors. You want the medicinal benefits of the terpinenes in your oleoresin. Always use a glass jar with a lid to render pitch. Tin will do if it has a lid but never use plastic. When you collect the oleoresin, use a knife to make it easier to get the resin in. Never take all the resin from any one spot on the tree, leaving the inner resin to suffocate the bugs or heal the breach in the integrity of the tree's bark.
*Make sure you know what you are harvesting. Some evergreens are poisonous, particularly yew trees.
Golden Rule to Harvesting
When harvesting pine pitch, there is one absolute golden rule that needs to be followed: Do not take it all! It does not belong to you, it belongs to the pine trees, and it's there for a purpose - to protect and help heal the tree. Please respect the wonder of nature and take less than a third of resin you find on any one tree. Leave each tree with enough resin to still have a thick layer over the wound. Remember, you want these trees to be around for years to come so you and your children can harvest their resin. Please don't put them at risk by overzealous resin harvesting. If possible look for a tree where the pine resin has dripped down well below the wound. Here you can harvest all the excess resin that isn't directly covering the wound without worrying about harming the tree.
In the summer, the resin is softer and fairly easy to slice off without hurting the bark beneath.
In colder weather, the resin hardens up quite a bit, but if you wiggle the knife beneath a patch of resin, you can usually pop off a fairly good chunk.
How to Make the Salve
Ingredients
1/2 cup pine oleoresin, rendered
1/4 cup of calendula infused oil
2 tbsp. St Johns Wort infused oil
2 tbsp Comfrey leaf infused oil
1/4 cup beeswax, melted
Essential oil of choice
Stovetop Method
Make a double broiler with a saucepan and with hot water in, and a bowl on top. *Make sure that the bowl doesn't touch the water.
Set the double broiler over a gentle heat and add the pine resin and oil to the bowl. *Pine resin is highly flammable so it should be done over a gentle heat.
Let them heat together until the pine resin melts. This may take some time, especially if you've got harder crystalized bits of resin.
Pass the mixture through a fine mesh metal strainer, some muslin, or a coffee filter, and capture the liquid that comes out.
Discard what is left in the strainer.
Return the liquid to the double broiler and add the beeswax, gently heating until the beeswax melts.
Pour into glass jars.
Add the essential oils.
Crockpot Method
Render the pine oleoresin by placing the jars you collected in your slow cooker. Fill halfway with water and turn it on medium heat. Simmer the water in the slow cooker, leaving the jars sitting on top of jar lids to render overnight, or as long as it takes to turn the pine resin to liquid. Any crud or bugs will sink to the bottom of the jar.
Pour the clean oleoresin into another strong glass jar, being careful to only transfer the clean oleoresin. Leave any crud in the original collecting jar and set it aside. You can render more raw pine resin in the same jar.
Pine Pitch Salve is sticky going on but it is quickly absorbed into the skin and the sickness goes away in just a few minutes.
*This content is for education purposes only. It is not meant to treat, diagnose, or cure any condition and does not offer medical advice.
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