132 – What are Burls?

Burls are Chaos Grain

Why a burl forms is not totally understood.  But from what we can tell it is a tree's response to an infection.  Perhaps it started as a scar or maybe something literally in the water.  The tree compartmentalizes it and it continues to grow while not threatening the overall tree's health.  Much like a benign tumor in a human.  The new bud tissue is folded and compressed and rolled without new shoots forming creating a wildly chaotic grain that continues to grow in a spherical shape on the outside of the tree.  What results when the burl is cut open is truly magnificent grain.

Mahogany Importing

I lost count of the number of people who emailed me about the blog post Christopher Schwarz put up about recycling Mahogany furniture and building new things from it rather than buying "new" Mahogany.  His statement that most of the new Mahogany is illegally harvested was a real trigger statement apparently.  I was hesitant to talk about this because it is much like a religious or political conversation and no matter what one says you won't change anyone's mind.  But I did finally decide that I needed to address it if for no other reason than to give people some tangible things they can do if they want to buy Mahogany.  Find out who the importer of record is and verify they have a CITES permit for the material.  And don't buy 3rd hand.  Do everything you can if not buying from the importer, then buying from their customer.  Certainly everyone in the supply chain should have access to the CITES permit but once the Mahogany changes hands several time within the same country that permit isn't needed and the origin of the material can get muddy.  This is why I don't recommend buying from outside those first 2 links in the supply chain.