Ancient Kauri

Kauri trees are among the oldest and biggest trees growing in the world. We have gone into several woodworking shops while here in New Zealand and seen some pretty amazing wood products made from ancient kauri. Ancient Kauri is 45,000-50,000 years old. It fell all those years ago into the swamp land and has been preserved in the wetlands for thousands of years. Excavation of the logs is a difficult and time consuming process. Once the logs are excavated, they are milled into awesome products.

A huge staircase was made into a trunk that was found and is now a centerpiece for the Kauri Kingdom store in the far north.The 1087 year old tree, weighed 140 tons when extracted from the ground, and is the largest piece ever found. A 50 ton section was cut from the tree to make the staircase. It took 300 hours to chainsaw the staircase out of the 50 ton piece that was cut from the log and 200 more hours to be finished. Kauri trees do still grow in New Zealand but are protected by very strict laws.

There are some really pretty bowls, cutting boards, picture frames, tables, and many other awesome products made out of this ancient wood. We saw a huge couch that was 50,000 dollars. It was awesome, but that's a little pricey! But who knows how much more of this wood is left to be milled.