This drives everyone I’m playing with insane. There needs to be a better way to farm bark. It’s the one thing that is always in low amount. You can break 2-4 trees and not get one tick of it. Then you end up with wood that you can’t do anything with.
Also, making leather and not having a dump for it all is extremely annoying. I don’t like having to drop the wood/leather. It makes me feel inefficient.
There is. In about 469 bark threads I mention that farming NPC settlements like The Den, The Black Galleon and New Asagarth is a great way to get bark at the earlier levels (as in before getting hardened steel picks to use on dead trees), in addition to myriad other useful materials.
In one thread we’ve been talking about harvesting dead, dried up trees for bark. It turns out they yield quite a bit more than living trees, especially with the higher tier picks. Dried trees also yield dry wood, which is quite useful. So farm these to feel more efficient. (Dry wood burns for 48 seconds each, the same as coal, so I use it as fuel, it can also be turned into insulated wood.)
If you’re making leather for tar, an alternative is to mine coal and throw it into the fluid press.
I ‘may’ have exaggerated on the number of bark threads, but there are a lot!
You need to use the steel pickaxe, it gives your more bark 
You can also add the harvest efficency upgrade to the pickaxe and it will be even better 