Pine resin is the sticky substance secreted by pine trees when they get damaged. This response protects the tree in many ways. Firstly the resin has antiseptic, astringent, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. These properties prevent the tree from becoming infected and encourage healing. The stickiness allows the resin to act as a natural adhesive staying put on the wound site. It also serves as a sealant preventing both moisture loss and damage from burrowing insects.
Each of these qualities has led to a long history of use by man for everything from medicine to construction. And it is still harvested commercially in many parts of the world. There are many different evergreen trees that you can collect resin from, with Pines, Spruce and Firs all being good candidates. As with all foraging, it is essential to ensure that you have correctly identified the tree before collecting. Please note that some of our native evergreen trees here in the UK are toxic (Yew for example).
Collecting pine resin is a sticky process. I would advise wearing old clothes and using a container that you keep for the purpose. Pine resin is oil rather than water soluble, so rubbing some oil into your hands before washing should help with removal.
How to Make Pine Resin Salve
Add an equal amount of oil to the resin you have collected. We used Almond, but Olive Oil works just as well. We ended up with roughly half a cup each of resin and oil.
Pine resin is extremely flammable so it should be melted into the oil gently using a double boiler. Our double boiler consisted of glass bowl and saucepan containing barely simmering water. Please note the glass bowl should sit above the water and be heated by the resulting steam not touch the water itself.
Simmer very gently until the resin melts. Ours took a good hour to dissolve.
Strain through a fine mesh strainer or piece of muslin and return to the double boiler.
For every cup of resin/oil mixture, add 1/4 cup of grated beeswax. Gently heat while stirring until the wax has melted, then pour the melted balm into small containers and allow to cool.
Although I have titled this as pine resin salve, we did collect our resin from many trees and used a mix of both pine and fir. Our resulting ointment has a lovely fragrance and should make a fab addition to our bushcraft first aid kit for use on sore and irritated skin.
As a bonus, pine resin salve can also be used as a fire starter smeared on cotton wool, or as an emergency candle with a makeshift wick due to it’s flammable properties.
For more traditional nature craft inspiration check out our Making Dye for Lichen and our How to Make Oak Gall Ink Posts.
15 comments
I have a ton of pine trees! I am going to have to make some.
Hi there! Thank you for this article. I have been collecting pine resin and made my first attempt at this salve today. I used a 1/4 cup of resin and 1/4 cup of oil. It seemed to melt fairly quickly (10 min or so), but I left it for about another 10 min. and tried straining it. I had a pine smelling oil, but almost a 1/4 cup of brown sort of granular sludge. My resin did have debris in it, but not to that extent. I put it back in the double boiler and ended up leaving it for 2 hours with the same result. I strained it and was left with 1/4 cup of resin/oil mixture. Do you have any advice on what I might have done wrong? Thanks!
Hi Karen. I dont think you are doing anything wrong, it sounds like you just got a stubborn batch that isn’t going to dissolve easily at the double boiler temperature. In my experience the soft resin does dissolve more easily than the hard crystalline pieces – perhaps use a little more resin next time and just accept that you’ll be discarding a portion of it.
Thanks so much for your reply. I made another batch and had slightly better luck in terms of how much I had to discard. The finished salve is wonderful, so I will take it as a win! I just needed to hear that I wasn’t doing something terribly wrong. Thanks again!
So pleased your Salve worked out Karen. I carry some with me when we are out and have even used it when camping as a fire starter!
Thank you for this lovely article! The addition of pictures was very helpful. Would increasing the resin ratio over oil allow the salve to be firm enough without having to add wax?
I think it would end up very sticky without the wax Marie, but you could give it a go. I’m all for experimenting and if I wanted to omit the beeswax I’d probably try adding some shea or cocoa butter instead to help firm it up :)
Can you use jojoba oil instead?
Hi Tanya I think Jojoba oil would work beautifully in this balm :)
This is just amazing. The ink, the salve and dye is an impressive example that we would be able to do a lot of things more naturally and maybe even on our own. Keep on !
Thanks for the lovely feedback Maximillian :)
This looks great Sarah. I plan to make some of this but would like a vegan version. Would coconut oil be a good alternative do you think?
Debbie
Thank you Deborah. I think that you could use coconut oil but you’d need to use it to replace the almond oil (or at least most of it) rather than the beeswax because I think both oils together would stay too liquid. If you want a salve that is stable enough to leave in the bottom of your bag without it melting I’d try Candelilla wax as a replacement for the beeswax. Please come back and let me know how your version works out, whatever you do try :)
I bet this works like a charm Sarah, and it must smell so lovely and fresh. I’d love to give this a try with some of our indigenous plants here in South Africa. I wonder if out Marula tree would work? It’s worth looking into and experimenting a little or even our aloes.
It’s a lovely smell Michelle. I don’t know the Manula Tree so off to google it now!