Madrone is known as Strawberry tree, Madrona, or Madrone burl. This is a unique Pacific hardwood that has pink & tan colors with an occasional red streak. Our Madrone blanks are highly burled & figured. Through our proprietary process, this wood has been pressure cooked to relieve tension and then wax sealed. Trees are typically 10” up to 30” diameter and between 40-70’ tall. Trunks are smooth as silk due to the tree shedding its bark continually. Logs are rarely straight so lumber over 10’ long is a rarity. Random trees growing in mixed stands of Douglas fir produce the best lumber as the trunk is long and relatively strait. Trees in the open are much more bushy with many limbs that will not produce good lumber. Burls grow almost exclusively underground and must be dug up sometimes by hand and then pressure cooked and milled. Many Madrone trees grow in areas that have many rocks so our sawyers have their hands full milling around the rocks and dirt pockets that are present in every burl. This is expensive due to the large number of saw blades that are destroyed and the large amount of labor milling this.
The wood in this special is pressure cooked and has the internal stress relieved in it. The outer 1/8” to ¼” may be black or light black in color but all blanks will have the reddish pink inside of them. The pictures show several blanks with the black color on the outside. Not all blanks have this but many do. Do not buy this based on the black color that is on the outside only. All blanks have been pressure cooked to relieve tension and prevent degrading. They are mostly air dried with blanks ranging from completely dry to having lost 85% of their original moisture. Several blanks have surface checks that are typically no deeper than 1/8” usually on one face. These will generally all turn away. Blocks are completely wax sealed; (they will slowly dry through the wax). This is exceptional quality material.
