Naval Stores, Florida (ca. early 1950's)

Photo caption: Improved gum naval stores extraction methods require new tools and techniques. Bark streaks 9 feet from the ground require a special long handled tool for pulling the streak and safely applying the acid. A combination bark-pulling and acid-treating tool was designed to meet this need. The laborer is shown applying 50-percent sulfuric acid to a streak 8 feet from the ground. This tool enables a laborer to stand a safe distance from the tree and reduce the hazard of acid drifting down on his head and clothes.

Excerpts from "Gum Naval Stores" pamphlet; Naval Stores and Timber Production Laboratory, Olustee, FL 32072; April 1981:

In time past, pine tar and pitch were used extensively on sailing ships to caulk seams and to protect ropes. No ship left port without an essential store of tar and pitch. These pine products are still referred to as naval stores, but they now have far different uses.
Today, the chemical products from pine trees - turpentine, rosin, and fatty acids - are used to manufacture inks, adhesives, perfumes, and hundreds of other consumer products. There are three ways of obtaining these chemical raw materials from pines. They can be produced as a byproduct of the process used to manufacture paper from pines; extracted from pitch-soaked stumps; or obtained by tapping live trees.
Of the 14 pine species throughout the world that are suitable for extraction of gum naval stores, only two - slash and longleaf pine - are worked or tapped for gum in the United States.
A tree must be wounded to induce gum flow, and for many years gum was extracted from pines by cutting deeply into the tree once a week. As the pine gum exuded from the tree, it was collected in a galvanized iron gutter system.
There were many problems with the old method of working the trees. The gum naval stores industry needed a greater quantity of quality gum that could be extracted and collected by less arduous means, and, at the same time, retain the tree form for later use.
Through research, many gum-collection procedures have been improved. . . A new method, called "bark chipping-acid stimulation" is the result of intensive research at the Olustee, FL laboratory. . . When harvested, the tree is still round and usable for all wood products, even poles or pilings.


Photo caption: No more jump-butts and wasted timber as a result of turpentining. A turpentined tree containing both front and back faces and worked for 8 years is shown entering a German gang-saw to produce quality lumber. Developing conservative gun extraction methods for the gum producer represents only half the problem, research must also prove to wood using industries that modern turpentining does not impair the stumpage value of the worked out tree.

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