Pitch

The word ‘pitch’ means many different things. We can pitch an idea. We can pitch a tent.

We can pitch crap off the roof.

The last several days, we’ve been dealing with a different type of ‘pitch’.

From the Dictionary app on my phone:

-noun

1. any of various dark, tenacious and viscous substances for caulking and paving, contsisting of the residue of the distillation of coal tar or wood tar.
2. any certain bitumens, as asphalt: mineral pitch
3. any of various resins
4. the sap or crude turpentine that exudes from the bark of pines

We had an old school roofing guy look at the roof when we were first figuring out how to fix the roof. He took cores of the different areas and said we have coal tar pitch as the oldest roofing membrane at this section.

As we sliced up the roofing, we hit the lowest level with the pitch and gravel. What a mess.

When it is warm, it is like thick taffy and it oozes out between the layers. When it is cold, it becomes very brittle. All the time, it a onyx like shiny material.

It is a fascinating material. We wrote about it a while ago, including the story of the pitch drop experiment. We had plenty of time to ponder it today. Hopefully less time, tomorrow.

It was a good day. Now we need a long hot shower and some scraping tools for ourselves.