Summary: Working with pine sap can have challenges. I am looking for a way to manipulate pine sap into a form that overcomes or reduces those challenges.

Challenges: Working with natural / raw pine sap has been difficult at times. Filtering out the materials that naturally fall into the sap before it dries, it is sticky and difficult to store/handle, as well as difficult to blend into an incense recipe.

Proposed Solutions:

Purification through liquifying pine sap and running it through a filter of some kind.
- Adding pine sap to isopropyl alcohol will liquify the material and make it easer to pour through a sieve.
  - Heating the pine sap until it's a thinner consistency may make it easier to pour through a sieve, but may continue to be messy as it may cool during the filtering process.
Increasing potency through liquification and dehydration.
- Adding pine sap to isopropyl alcohol will liquify the material. Placing that liquid into a lab basin, apply heat, and magnetically stirring the liquid to remove the water and isopropyl alcohol may result in a more potent mixture.
Removing sticky elements from pine sap
- Adding pine sap to isopropyl alcohol may result in a non-sticky substance or less sticky substance.

Questions:

Does isopropyl alcohol interfere with the fragrance?
Does isopropyl alcohol reduce or remove the stickiness?
Does heating pine sap result in an easier material to filter and use when making incense?
What ratio of pine sap to isopropyl alcohol is best? And how long does it take?

Experiments:

Q: What ratio of pine sap to isopropyl alcohol is best? How long does it take?

I can confirm a ratio of 50/50 does work. It is possible that less alcohol could work. I have not tested.
I can confirm that at a ratio of 50/50, it takes ₄ days to dissolve.

Tip: Put the alcohol in the container before the sap. Otherwise, your sap will fill the bottom and the alcohol won't be able to reach the bottom of the container.

Tip: Leave enough air in the container so that you can shake it, which helps speed up the process by allowing the alcohol to surround the sap.