Many of us desire to make our own perches out of trees growing nearby, but the question of what is safe and what is not is always an issue. Pine is safe, but only when cured. Cured means the pitch has been removed. Pine pitch contains turpentine, a somewhat toxic substance used to remove oil paint from surfaces. It's more than somewhat toxic to parrots. Lumber workers cure their lumber by stacking it a certain way and leaving it for about four months to air dry. But we don't want to wait four months to use our perches. I decided to do an experiment.
If it can evaporate into the air, it can dissolve in water, right? So I stuck three pine sticks, all stripped of bark, in my swimming pool under the ladder for 24 hours.
The three sticks were all different ages. One was fairly fresh, one was extremely old and even had a little rot I had to scrape off, and the other was in between and still extremely sticky to the touch once the bark was removed because of the excess of pitch.
Success! Soaking in the swimming pool for 24 hours seemed to remove all the pitch from the greenest branch. I decided to proceed with the method I generally use for sterilizing branches for perches, and baked them all for an hour in the oven on 180 degrees. 180 degrees is the temperature at which no organism can live, but is well below the burning point of wood, thankfully.
However...
Upon removing the sticks from the oven, I found my supposedly clean branches covered with pitch! And not just the youngest branch, either, though that one had the most! All three of them had sticky spots.
It would appear that the baking process forced all the pitch left inside the branches to the surface. I've got them in the swimming pool right now to remove it.
If a second baking does not make the branches produce pitch again, then I believe I will have succeeded in finding a way to remove pitch from pine branches in about two days!
I will update this post with my findings after the second baking. Wish me luck! And I hope my findings are a help to all the other DIYers who love to make things for their parrots! Maybe when I am finished, if the experiment is successful, this can be a sticky?
If it can evaporate into the air, it can dissolve in water, right? So I stuck three pine sticks, all stripped of bark, in my swimming pool under the ladder for 24 hours.
The three sticks were all different ages. One was fairly fresh, one was extremely old and even had a little rot I had to scrape off, and the other was in between and still extremely sticky to the touch once the bark was removed because of the excess of pitch.
Success! Soaking in the swimming pool for 24 hours seemed to remove all the pitch from the greenest branch. I decided to proceed with the method I generally use for sterilizing branches for perches, and baked them all for an hour in the oven on 180 degrees. 180 degrees is the temperature at which no organism can live, but is well below the burning point of wood, thankfully.
However...
Upon removing the sticks from the oven, I found my supposedly clean branches covered with pitch! And not just the youngest branch, either, though that one had the most! All three of them had sticky spots.
It would appear that the baking process forced all the pitch left inside the branches to the surface. I've got them in the swimming pool right now to remove it.
If a second baking does not make the branches produce pitch again, then I believe I will have succeeded in finding a way to remove pitch from pine branches in about two days!
I will update this post with my findings after the second baking. Wish me luck! And I hope my findings are a help to all the other DIYers who love to make things for their parrots! Maybe when I am finished, if the experiment is successful, this can be a sticky?