Making glue out of pine tree sap and ash

Our family went on a camping trip earlier this summer and David made glue using pine tree sap and ash. Here is a little tutorial of how he did it. It's written by David; I stole it from his facebook. 

Step 1: To make pine sap glue the first thing I need to do is collect pine sap. First I tried tapping a tree with spiles. This was a failure on the pine trees because the sap wood is so thin. I had better results when I just hacked up about a 6" square on the side of a tree and nailed a bucket below it to catch the sap. But, this was still much too slow. I would have to wait a week or two to get any usable amount of sap.

The best way I found to collect sap was foraging. I just walked around the forest for 15 or 20 minutes peeling bits of sap off of damaged areas of trees. some trees have a lot. Some trees have none. But in not too long I had enough sap globules to fill a tuna can.

Step 2: I pulled a few pieces of charcoal out of the pit from last night's campfire and crushed them up into as fine a powder as I could make using my knife and a rock.

Step 3: Next I needed to strain out all of the wood, pine needles, etc... from the sap.

So, I started a fire. After the fire warmed up a bit I put the sap globs into a soup can with a bunch of holes in the bottom that I poked with a nail. I put the soup can inside of the tuna can. Then I set it on a log in the fire until it melted down into liquid. It catches fire pretty easily so I was ready to remove the cans and blow it out before all my sap burned up. I've heard that liquid tree sap makes great torch fuel.

Once your sap begins to turn to liquid get something to pick up the soup can with and hold it just above the tuna can. Use a stick to push the liquid sap through the holes in the soup can and into the tuna can.

This will leave fairly clean sap in the tuna can and most of the bits of bark and junk in the soup can.

Step 4: Once you've got your clean sap you can add in the crushed up charcoal. The amount of charcoal will vary based on the purity of the sap, and the hardness of the wood that was burned. It seems that about 3 parts sap and 1 part charcoal is a good starting point. You just have to play with the ratio from there.

Now that you've mixed the charcoal with the sap you have your glue. I gobbed some on both ends of a small stick to dry. To use is all I have to do is heat it up with a lighter or something and rub it on whatever I'm gluing.

I used the glue from the left side of the stick to make my walking stick.