Hand Selected Beetle Kill Blue Stain Pine
Posted: February 20, 2013
A common question we get is “why does your beetle kill pine have so much more blue stain and character than what I find at the local lumberyard”?
Most beetle kill pine products on the market are sourced from large sawmills using traditional logging practices. Most of them come from the abundance of Lodge Pole pine commonly found in the Rocky Mountains. Conversely we selectively harvest the beetle kill Ponderosa Pine trees the sawmills leave behind due to their large diameters and heavy blue stain content. Large commodity sawmills need timber that is fast and easy to process and yields as much bright wood as possible. Bright (no blue stain) wood yields a higher return on the lumber commodity market since there is less defects like rot, bug holes, and blue stain.
Like all of our products we upcycle timber the commodity lumber buyers don’t want. Since we are a value added specialty lumber company we try to find homes for the salvaged timber that is left to rot in the forest. One thing to note is when a tree is left to rot in the forest it releases all the carbon back into the atmosphere which it has stored for up to hundreds of years. The average age of the beetle kill Ponderosa Pine trees we havest are 250 years old! Adding value and upcycling these trees prevents carbon emissions back into the atmosphere.
Not only are we reducing the amount of carbon released back into the atmosphere, we’re helping one of Mother Nature’s best kept secrets to add color and character to your home or project. The wild colors consist of blues, blacks, reds, browns, and greens; you will never find colors like this in any natural wood product anywhere in the world.
Thanks to our customers we’re slowly creating a demand for the beetle kill pine trees that have been historically left behind.
