Oeey Gooey Workday - Melting Pitch

First I cooked this- Pitch! I'm getting ready to teach a workshop in a few weeks, so I needed to prepare at least 8 pitch pots for the students to use. I provide pitch pots and chasing tools that the students can use during the class. At the end of the class, the students can purchase the pot and tools, or give them back, no strings attached. This is such a specialized technique, that I feel it's not fair to ask the students to spend so much money right away, before they've even know if they'll continue with it.

Here's the bowls, filled with chunks of cold pitch, going into a 275°F oven. Temperature varies by each oven and even by each batch of pitch. Safety glasses and heavy duty hot pads are a must. Follow the directions and safety precautions that come with your own batch of pitch. Read the msds, and so on...

After about 15 minutes

After nearly an hour and out of the oven

We'll still need to add little bit more pitch on top when we start the chased relief work, to fill the back of the metal pieces.

Those are nice sturdy pitch pots, about 8 inches across and 4 inches deep. I fill them completely with pitch, quite expensive. A lot of jewelers, who aren't tapping hard at all, will fill their pitch pots 2/3 with plaster or lightweight concrete blends. For myself, and in my workshops, the plaster or concrete would pop out at an inconvenient time. I guess I tap a lot harder with my hammer.... Hey, if you're not tapping it hard enough to break out the plaster, you don't even need a pitch pot. Save yourself a little money. Just stick a lump of pitch on a depression in a block of wood and go for it.

As if that wasn't enough ooey gooey, I also melted down a bunch of pig fat and made suet cakes for the wild birds.

This fat has been waiting in the freezer for months, since we got half a butchered pig from one of our neighbors. It really wasn't as hard or messy as I thought it would be. Maybe next fall I'll try making lard.