[PW] ? Turpentine clearing

[Brian Whatcott]

At 11:35 AM 3/20/2008, you wrote:
>Thoreau mentions visiting a turpentine clearing.
>  Could anyone tell me what a turpentine clearing is?
>Thanks. - Jeff
>
>Jeffrey S. Cramer, Curator of Collections
>The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods

It's probably best for me to condense an entry from the
Georgia Encyclopedia, the state where turpentiners were
  carrying out the largest turpentine business at some point.

"Turpentiners

In the winter, pine trees were boxed, meaning that a triangular cavity,
known as a "box,"  was cut into each trunk.
...With the arrival of warm weather, chippers cut the bark above each 
box to allow
the flow of gum, or resin, into the cavity. In the spring and summer, 
dippers removed
the resin, also known as "dip," from the box with a trowel-shaped spade.
A scrape was also used to remove the hardened gum that had accumulated
in the chip above the box.

Crude turpentine was distilled throughout the eight-month dipping season.
A tree might produce as much as 8.3 pounds of crude turpentine during the
first two years of harvesting.  Longleaf yellow pine and slash pine produced
  the highest grade of turpentine. The distillation process began 
with log fires heating
the turpentine still, while the stiller and his crew charged a copper 
kettle with
five to eight barrels of gum.

Each barrel of crude dip produced six to seven  gallons of spirits of 
turpentine.
The remaining rosin, which formed a hot residue was  ladled into barrels.
The peak of distilling activity occurred in the summer, when the flow of
  gum was greatest. ...
After two or three years, naval stores crews dismantled their stills, 
commissaries,
and other facilities and moved their laborers and equipment to areas where
virgin dip was more plentiful."


Brian Whatcott    Altus OK    Eureka!