Talk:Rosin

Slash Pines?
Why are slash pines not mentioned in the list of trees rosin is made out of. I used to work for a company called Diamond G forestry products in Patterson GA, and they only got sap out of Slash pine, to make Rosin. They tried Loblollies, but they run little to no sap for making Rosin. I don't know who is making Rosin with loblollies or why, but if someone is actually doing that... I am amazed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DraygenKai (talk • contribs) 14:14, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Comments
Pine resin, heated, ranges to black. That reminds me a lot about tarmaking (spruce, burned in a certain way, tar caught). The connection is not made here, thnough.

sealing wax
Rosin is an ingredient in printing inks, varnishes, glues, medicines, chewing gum, soap, paper sizing, and, in past times, sealing wax.

Why "in past times"? Sealing wax still exists, and Wikipedia says shellac and resin have replaced wax and turpentine. Flapdragon 17:03, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

"some is semi-fluid at the temperature of boiling water, while others melt at 100 to 120 degrees celcius." Isn't the temperature of boiling water 100 degrees celcius?

Rosin is a non-crystalline, glassy material and strictly speaking, doesn't "melt". Instead, it gets increasingly softer with more of a tendency to flow with increasing temperature. Rosin typically has a softening point of around 75-80C.

I qualified "melting point" to read "practical melting point" in the Properties section for this reason. Also, I changed the double bass rosin section to say that such rosin will show "evidence of flow" if left for several months. As far as I understand, rosin will not just "melt" (i.e. lose its viscosity) if just left there. Vigormaster (talk) 20:53, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Double bass rosin will "melt" if left in the sun. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.255.49.96 (talk) 02:05, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

price of rosin
Dear editors: I'm a concert classical violinist (proof available upon request). There are NO rosins that cost $100s. Most expensive rosin for violin is Gold 1 by Liebenzeller Metal-Kolophonium. It costs about $25. String Rosins are available in Dark (soft, sticky compound for more friction, used on cellos and string bass) and lighter varieties (dry, less sticky, for violin etc.) However many Rosins are in between, and string players have different preferences as well.


 * What the poster above writes is true; I teach viola & violin for a living and I raise my eyes at a cake of rosin costing $20.00. Usually $10.00 is more than enough to buy new rosin for bowed string instruments. Unless there's a steep spike in US inflation, I can't imagine that any of the other uses listed in the article require rosin costing hundreds of dollars either..... J Lorraine 08:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Someone just added a 'citation needed' to the end of the comments about rosin prices. Is it even possible to find a publication to cite for prices of rosin (that isn't a primary source)? Perhaps price should not be in an encyclopedia. Is Wikipedia the right place for a how-to guide on not getting screwed when you buy rosin? J Lorraine 08:10, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I was being generous in not just removing it; it's unsourced and contentious, so if you feel it's unwarranted then please go ahead and remove it. Chris Cunningham 15:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Increase Grip?
"Gymnasts, weight lifters, and baseball pitchers use a bag of powdered rosin to keep their hands dry and to increase their grip." Isn't chalk usually used for this? Isn't the primary problem sweat on the hands and not skin–metal friction? I'm very dubious of this claim. Can anyone provide a citation? —BenFrantzDale 04:58, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd be dubious too. Powdered rosin is very sticky stuff and would tend to glue the hands to the metal, making it difficult to slide along a bar or shift one's grip on a set of weights. I believe climbers use magnesium carbonate powder rather than ordinary chalk incidentally, perhaps it's the same with the gymnasts, weight lifters, and baseball pitchers. Flapdragon 23:46, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Sure enough the Wikipedia entry for magnesium carbonate says it's used used in gymnastics, weightlifting and climbing. Deleted the relevant sentence on the balance of probabilities. Flapdragon 23:54, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * The sentence deletion is inappropriate, so I'm reverting the edit, and adding some easily found web references. Powdered resin is used for adding grip in many sports, see Mueller's 2006/7 catalogue, which shows that 4 out of 10 of their "grip enhancing" products for sport consist of rosin or resin (is the difference any more than pure semantics?). There are a number of suppliers of resin/rosin bags for sportsmen, and a walk through a well-supplied sports shop would show this. MgCO3 is used to decrease friction, caused by wet hands, a rather different thing from what the resin powder does. Resin powder is permissible under the rules of baseball to dry the hands, but not for putting on the ball. In bowling rosin/resin powder is often used to help with ball control. The makers of a well-known form of resin dispenser say: "Squash, tennis, table tennis badminton, baseball, golf, hockey and lacrosse are perhaps the sports most identified ... but it is also used with equal effectiveness by pole vaulters, discus throwers, basketball players, rugby players, netball players, weight-lifters and gymnasts." --Seejyb 19:20, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if any athletes currently (2006) actually use rosin, but I do know for sure that it was sold for such uses. I have an old 6 ounce can of Cramer's Powdered Rosin Mixture, mfg. by The Cramer Chemical Co., Gardner, Kansas. The can says:


 * FOR SLIPPERY PLAYING FLOORS
 * ABSORBS OIL, GREASE, SWEAT
 * Standard for all athletic and gym uses.
 * Harmless to rubber and leather.
 * To Reduce Slip on Shoes, Mats, Hands.
 * Keep a can of Powdered Rosin Mix, in each game kit -- for all sports.
 * Sprinkle on floor by players' bench.
 * Use liberally on soles of shoes.
 * Available in Rosin Bags, too! A Standard in Big-League Baseball / Suitable For All Sports

69.87.200.3 12:25, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Excellent article
Great article! Very informative and gave all the information I wanted. Well done. NaySay 18:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

corrosive?
I have noticed (by examining the strings on my instrument and the case) that resin is slightly corrosive, and a friend of mine (who is a luthier), has confirmed this fact. I have not found any sources on the internet though, but I haven't been searching for more than a few minutes. Maybe someone else knows about this? 79.136.94.68 (talk) 23:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * In my sonar-building days, all solder joints had to be cleaned of flux, which was not necessarily done for commercial electronics back then (surface-mount boards were already on the scene.) The customer, the Navy, considered rosin flux residue to be a contaminant. I believe rosin is hygroscopic, attracts water vapor, that is, which can't be that great for keeping metal free from corrosion. Sorry, no particulars to offer beyond that, although I do use a dry cloth or cork to keep my strings from getting crusted with rosin. Unevenly distributed mass such as rosin buildup can pull the overtones out of tune, giving results similar to a "false" string. Corrosion won't help that situation either. __Just plain Bill (talk) 03:10, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Strings speak
Regarding this diff, see How to Make a String Speak.

Strings are said to "speak" when they start vibrating in a way I can best describe as "full-bodied." Bowing a string with an unrosined bow, or lightly brushing the string with a rosined bow, may make a sound, but it will not get the string to speak. Organ pipes are similarly said to speak, in the sense of launching their sound, starting with the attack phase of the ADSR envelope. __Just plain Bill (talk) 03:06, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I see somebody just "fixed" it again. An un-rosined bow will make a string vibrate, if faintly. To get the string to speak takes rosined hair. __ Just plain Bill (talk)

Unsourced yet known
Properties of rosin includes slow evaporation of lighter fractions if not airtight, rendering luthiers' products suboptimal. Pines are tapped for rosin. Pines produce rosin as natural wound defense. I don't have sources for this now. Mydogtrouble (talk) 18:26, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes from what I understand Sap to trees is the same as blood for us. When the tree is wounded, sap flows out and seals the wound to keep out bugs, and other things. Rosin is made from pine sap so after the sap has dried up, it is not uncommon to find rosin on trees. DraygenKai (talk)

Relation to Pine Tar?
How does this distillation product relate to pine tar?71.203.125.108 (talk) 13:53, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes! Rosin is the by product of distilling Turpintine. DraygenKai (talk)

Rosin Baked Potatos
I stumbled across an entry in the Joy of Cooking that calls for melted rosin to bake potatos. After a little search on the internet, this seems to have a small but devoted following as the method cooks the potato to perfection. It seems like an unsusal and interesting use for rosin. Perhaps it should be added to the "uses" section of the article?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nylotic (talk • contribs) 13:49, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The "Cracker Barrel" chain used to use this method, so it was quite widely known as they have stores all over. This article claims they were made to stop by health departments since the skin of such potatoes cannot be eaten. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.101.8.144 (talk) 05:30, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Use of Rosin in solder for electronics.
The statement regarding the use of Rosin in wire solder is somewhat out of date. Tin/Lead solder is becoming less and less common due to the ever tightening regulations around the world, such as RoHS, giving way to a seemingly endless selection of lead-free solder alloys. In addition, the use of Rosin as a flux for electronic soldering has been declining for years with the introduction of "No-Clean" fluxes, which, unlike Rosin based fluxes, become chemically inert after soldering and do not need to be cleaned off. Rosin is still used in high reliability electronics however, as it is exceptionally good at producing nice shiny high quality joints and has excellent wetting capabilities.

The section about rosin being frequently seen around new soldering as a burnt or clear residue is also incorrect, I'll hazard a guess that this confusion stems from people referring to the flux core inside solder wire as "Rosin" regardless of what the core is actually made of (like how people refer to modern, digital storage oscilloscopes as "CROs"). Actual Rosin leaves a reddish brown residue that you should not be seeing on any products from a reputable manufacturer, for the reasons stated above.

I'm not going to make the edits myself because it's an obvious violation of WP:OR (everything I have stated is from my own knowledge gained inside the electronics manufacturing industry) and I'm pretty lazy when it comes to finding sources. But I felt the need to point the error out so that someone less lazy than me can fix it properly. 112.141.194.183 (talk) 12:47, 23 November 2018 (UTC)


 * In the time it took you to write this talk page, you could have made at least a majority of the corrwctions you mentioned. Which contributes more than a talk page that has gone ignored for the last 5 years. 2607:FEA8:99E0:61D0:40C3:A3C4:A009:1D3A (talk) 17:24, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Rosin is often applied to the bow before playing the instrument??
Surely only when the operator is hopelessly drunk? (The bow hair is the more usual choice of target, right?) I’ve amended to what I think was the intended meaning. Somebody MIGHT LIKE TO CHECK?

- SquisherDa (talk) 15:30, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Can anyone add info about the kind of rosin used in the rosin bag in baseball? It doesn't look like the other photos of rosin on this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.20.181.49 (talk) 19:26, 2 June 2021 (UTC)