Upper Skagit’s Sustainable Forestry Turns Maples to Guitars
Two maple trees harvested from Upper Skagit Tribe timberlands have a musical future ahead of them.
The trees were sold to Pacific Rim Tonewoods, a specialty sawmill upriver from the Upper Skagit Reservation that sells lumber to guitar makers Taylor and Martin, among others. While most guitar tops, sound boards and braces are made from spruce, maple is often used for the back, in part because of its decorative figuring. Figures are not the same as a wood’s grain; they are the distinctive pattern trees have when cut perpendicular to the grain direction.
The mill’s owner, Steve McMinn, toured a parcel of timberland that the Upper Skagit Tribe owns near its casino off Bow Hill Road. Among several hundred trees, he found one that had the fiddleback, or flame, figures popular on guitar backs. When the parcel was harvested, he discovered another maple with a quilt pattern.
The trees sold for two to three times more than other maples sell to a regular sawmill. The lucrative sale is part of Upper Skagit timberland services manager Robert Schuyler’s plan to develop a sustainable forestry operation. (more…)