I posted earlier about milling loblolly pine to use as non structural building materials and I’m trying to come up with a cost effective means of setting the pitch. From what I have read pitch will set at any temperature up to that temperature. Say 100 degrees for 48 hours will keep the pitch solid up to 100 degrees forever. Over 100 and it’ll start to liquify again. 100 seems like a lot but the surface of a piece of wood exposed to a window or even the sun during the summer can get there in a hurry. The room temperatures may be cool but say a foot of baseboard directly across from a window could get pretty hot pretty quick. Nothing pretty about pitch oozing out of your nice baseboard LOL.
With that in mind it seems like a small, well insulated nearly airtight structure with a couple of space heaters inside would do the job over a couple of days. I’ve read that 160 degrees is ideal for most uses over a 24-48 hour period. I don’t think a couple of 3 or 4 1500 watt space heaters would get a 10x5x5 “box” to 160 degrees but I think in the summer in the south they’d easily maintain 100 degrees for days and days. It’d be akin to a hot box on a job site…one 100 watt bulb will boil a can of soup in about 4 hours….I’ve eaten a heap of meals heated that way. Anyone have any thoughts? Crazy? Shear ignorance? I’ll own that…there is far more I don’t know than know!