Bog oak. Bog oak is a modern production technology. Scope and use of bog oak Does bog oak burn

In this issue of the magazine "Forest Expert" we continue the conversation about a unique and rare type of material - bog oak or black wood. It has long been no secret to anyone that the traditions of making products from bog oak have undergone many trials over the past century. Today, there are practically no stocks of bog oak left in Europe. In Russia, despite centuries of experience in the extraction and processing of this material, bog oak was "crossed out of the list" for about 70 years. It would seem that the fashion for expensive gifts made of ebony "black wing" has sunk into the past along with prim balls and gilded carriages - but in recent years the situation has begun to change. Thanks to the efforts of people who combine enthusiasm, respect for Nature and the ability to take risks, the tradition of making products from bog oak is experiencing its Renaissance. On the pages of our section "Expert Opinion" - the word of Dmitry Isaenko, who has gone from a forester to the president of the Rusexport Consortium, whose company currently occupies a leading position in the market for the extraction and processing of black wood.

Source - lesnoyexpert.spb.ru/index.php?p=article&id=view&n=6&a=4

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If we touch on the history of the traditions of bog oak, it should be noted that in Russia people have been working with black wood for a long time. We didn’t have the concept of “cabinet maker”, elite wood products were made from bog oak and it was cabinet makers who worked with them. This material in Russia is ancient. Furniture, souvenirs and handicrafts were made from it, products from bog oak were inherited.
Before the revolution, this elite material was mined industrially by the Moscow-Kazan Railway joint-stock company, and bog oak reserves were developed on the territory of Mordovia. Then, in connection with the outbreak of the First World War, the extraction of bog oak was closed in our country. This happened due to the fact that, basically, the extracted material was supplied to Europe, where interiors were created in the royal courts - stairs, railings and other parts of the interior of the houses of the august persons were decorated with bog oak. Due to the outbreak of war, all contracts with the Europeans were cancelled. The official announcement that the production of products from bog oak has been revived, went through teletypes and news agencies on May 27, 2004.

As for me, I have dealt with this problem for a long time, the Rusexport Consortium was created in early 2002 - precisely for the revival of lost technologies, extraction, drying, processing and production of products. Before registering the company, I worked on technology development with leading professors of the Moscow State Forest Institute. Since since 1991 there has been no contact between woodworkers and the scientific community, I tried to restore this necessary link, clarifying the questions for which products bog oak can be used and in what quantities. This topic is very interesting, because until now the secrets of black oak stained over 2 thousand years have not been fully unraveled. Under hydromorphic conditions, during leaching, weak structural elements (weak ligvine) are washed out and polyminerals and metal salts of iron, aluminum, etc. take their place. With the further presence of the stem in water, the remaining organic matter gradually mineralizes, tannides and cellulose play the largest role here. At the same time, metals strengthen interstructural bonds. Due to this, the oak acquires an uncharacteristically increased strength, hardness, and density. Therefore, in Russia there were a lot of practices about healing a person with this tree - products made of bog oak, located in the surrounding interior, heal. This fact is indisputable, we have begun a large research work together with the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Wood to study the features of the positive effect of bog oak on the human body. Specific research results will be documented - what diseases bog oak treats, what is the effectiveness of such treatment, what preventive actions does it have.

I would like to note that in Russia during the work of our Consortium it has become fashionable to have some kind of black wood accessory at home, more and more orders are coming in. This year, the Rusexport Consortium was awarded the National Ecological Prize of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences for its contribution to the environment. As Valery Roshchupkin, head of the Russian Federal Agency for Forestry, noted, the Rusexport Consortium is the only enterprise that creates masterpieces of furniture art without harming wildlife. We work only with fossil materials, without damaging wildlife.

Many unscrupulous manufacturers sell stained oak; oak, welded in a special chamber, as well as firewood, which has lain under water for several decades and is of no value as a material - neither in color, nor in the healing properties of the material. Real bog oak is a very expensive elite material, which has no equal in the world. The process of mineralization, which has been going on for less than one and a half thousand years, is incomplete. We are trying to develop deposits of bog oak, the process of staining of the material of which is at least one and a half - two thousand years old. This year, the Institute of Geology of the Russian Sciences confirmed that the age of the oak being developed by the Consortium is at least two thousand one hundred and fifty years. We have no competitors in the West, but since the European countries were the leaders in the production of interiors, we decided not to reinvent the wheel and invited the leading European enterprises to the Consortium.

Let me remind you that Rusexport signed agreements on the creation of joint brands with such Italian furniture companies as Carlo Monzio Compagnon, a palace furniture company, Maestro Carlo Cappellini, a collection furniture manufacturer, and the Emergroup furniture group. At the same time, not a single kilogram of our raw materials "left" abroad. There are also orders from a Russian customer. Thus, recently the state transport company "Rossiya" placed an order with the Consortium for the manufacture of four tables made of stained wood for the aircraft of the President of the Russian Federation. It is quite possible that after this order, the fashion for interiors made of bog oak will follow among the officials of the Russian state apparatus. I don't see anything wrong with state-owned companies - such as the Russian Foreign Ministry - and many companies that need representative interiors and furniture, ordering them from a company that creates interiors without harming the environment. This is how it should be - first of all, the state should take care of our ecology. Since relic oak forests have been completely destroyed all over the world, and there are only about 1.5% of oak forests on Earth, and they continue to degrade (every 20-30, according to statistics, their number is reduced by 20-30%), it is easy to take care of the protection of oak forests necessary. In the case where you need to use hardwoods, and, in particular, oak, you need to use bog oak as a material. This should be done not because bog oak interiors are now in fashion, but, first of all, in the name of wildlife conservation.

In addition, today Russia is increasingly losing its resources of folk craft, and it will be very difficult, if not almost impossible, to revive them later. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with them, to revive the half-forgotten traditions of folk crafts right now. Well, in order not to get into a mess and not become a victim of scammers selling fake products, passing them off as made from bog oak, I would advise the following. Before making a purchase, please contact the expert department of our Consortium or carefully study the certificates attached to the product.

I will not hide the fact that the revival of industry technologies from bog oak, like any other "know-how", required a lot of work. Therefore, those who bring their original idea to implementation, there are only one percent. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs in the market are too pragmatic and conservative. In order to bring my idea to life, I needed professionalism, I needed faith in the idea, faith in scientists and love for Nature.

Bog wood, bog oak is a unique wood, rare and fabulously expensive. Elite furniture, parquet and even jewelry are made from it, which are extremely strong, unique and durable. It is valued all over the world and the fashion for it is enduring, like the fashion for gold and diamonds.

But rarely does anyone think about its origin. Rather, the official information is:

For many hundreds of years, oak trunks sunk during floods or rafting lie at the bottom of rivers and oxbow lakes. They are partially or completely covered with sand and silt, which means that the wood is largely isolated from oxygen. In such conditions, the tree becomes strong, like a stone. It undergoes a change in the chemical composition, and at the same time it turns out to be treated with such a natural preservative as tannins. Further. Tannins, of which there are plenty in oak wood, enter into a chemical reaction with iron salts dissolved in water. After such a complex and long process, the sunken tree is qualitatively transformed. Its wood acquires unique physical properties: it becomes not only durable and strong, but also amazing in color.

But are the floods in the past capable of “cutting” so many trees in almost all rivers of the European part of Russia, Ukraine

My friend on LiveJournal tar_s shared his pictures:

Oaks under clay. Central Russia. The wood is stained, it was torn out of the river in large quantities for construction purposes.
Filmed on the phone. Yes, and in order to take a good picture, you need to shoot from the river, from the boat. It can be seen that the oak is even as a string and a meter in girth. Above the place where it goes into the cliff, four meters of soil - clay and sand. Chernozem layer on top is about 15 cm.
They usually have roots like this:

So I look at them - no more than 300 years maximum. But rather less. Pulling them out is really, really hard. Locals told how trucks dug in when they pulled a log out of the water, one end of which was in the bottom.
Apparently, the river changed its course (and there were several old women around), and simply washed out the place where the oak forest used to be. I was especially struck by the thickness and evenness of the oak trunk. It takes a large number of years for it to grow like this; in the area all oaks are at most 20 cm in girth. And there are no straight lines, all knotty, curved. This suggests that the conditions for the trees were more suitable. For comparison, in that photo the phone case is 12 cm long.
there was a real ship forest. I don’t see natural dams, trunks stick out evenly along the river, here and there. Rather, as I said, the river washed the previously covered trees.

The usual version - The river in the forest washes away the trees, they fall and are carried away by the stream. Further, in a whirlpool, they are covered with sand and clay and .. we are waiting for a couple of hundred years. But judging by the amount of it in the rivers, the rivers washed away all the forests, completely. Leaving nothing to posterity. The depth and condition say that this is several hundred years, if more than 500, then the tree will already petrify. I read that in the 19th century there was so much bog wood that it was mined to heat stoves. And this despite the fact that pulling it out is easier to cut down a few trees in the forest. But if they didn’t cut it, then there were no trees. All photos of the 19th century in Russia say that there was practically no forest. About the same and the current forests - trees, no more than 200 years old. By the way, in the 20th century there was a whole industry of building houses from stained wood - OAK, LARCH, BIRCH AND PINE! This is how many rivers washed away forests? And it was like this - The forests washed away by the wave were washed away into the rivers, and carried down by the stream. There were many trees, they made natural dams, because of which the level of rivers locally rose, sand and clay from the stream filled them up and "cemented". This is confirmed by rocks that are homogeneous in thickness and content in the layer of covered trees. Please let me know if there is anything in your case.

Such a trunk can only grow in a forest, the thickness of 300 years, add 200 (let's say), a total of at least 500 years from birth. There are also oaks over 500 years old. In the European part of Russia, oaks over 500 years old are almost never found. Maximum single copies. Conclusion - 200-300 years ago, some kind of cataclysm washed away a huge number of trees into the water. The question is what could have done this, then flushing the uprooted trees into the rivers. I think those trees that did not end up under clay, water and sand without oxygen, the bacteria processed a maximum of a dozen or two years, completely into dust, so there are no traces in the upper layers on land from the trunks. Only in clay layers.

I supplement with photos that I found on the Internet:

If you follow this link, you will see that the following souvenirs are made from this wood:

Extraction of stained wood in Ukraine

Why aren't these growing now? Haven't grown up yet. It takes hundreds of years for oaks to grow into such giants.

Please note that the trunk at the root is broken off. Those. washing the tree with flood water cannot explain this fact. This tree was broken off by a catastrophic stream.

There are two ways to obtain bog oak wood - in natural conditions and artificially. In the first case, nature itself acts as the creator. By eroding the banks of rivers, by melting the roots of oaks, this “master” ensures that the trees are completely submerged in water. Further, tannins contained in oak wood come into play. They prevent the wood from rotting. Metal salts dissolved in water, entering into combination with tannins and resinous substances, change the properties of wood.

So oak, which has lain in water for hundreds of years, covered with a layer of silt, not only does not lose its characteristics, but also becomes a precious material. After being pulled out of the water, a person takes the bog oak. Its main task is to properly dry the tree. This will require several years and special technology. After bog oak can be processed, making elite wooden products from it.

There is a meager amount of bog oaks left in the world. Each new copy is worth its weight in gold. The complexity of the extraction, processing and processing of wood affect the cost of the final products. So natural bog oak wood is an elite material, rare and expensive.

Cheaper analogues are obtained by artificial staining, using mordants and dyes. Oak wood is placed in a bath with a solution of the desired inorganic salts and compounds, and the material is deeply processed. To increase the density and increased resistance to external influences, craftsmen resort to heat treatment, steaming. Also, to protect the wood, impregnation with natural oils is used. Bog oak of artificial origin is close to natural in color and characteristics. This allows the use of analogues in the manufacture of furniture, stairs and finishing materials. However, artificial wood is not so valuable and cannot be the pride of a true connoisseur.

Unique characteristics of bog oak

Bog oak wood is distinguished by its unique color range and richness of patterns. Its main difference is a dark noble shade. Depending on the age of the tree, the chemical composition of the water, the level of precipitation and other factors, black with silver veins, charcoal with a purple tint, ashen, silver tone may appear.

In terms of strength, bog oak wood is compared with iron. Products made from this wood are durable and wear-resistant. The undoubted advantage of wood is naturalness. Created without dyes and other chemicals, this material is 100% environmentally friendly. In addition, the tree from which it is obtained grew in a more favorable ecological environment, long before the appearance of exhaust gases, radioactive waste, pesticides and other pollutants.

Cultural potential is another characteristic for which antique dealers and fans of things with history appreciate bog oak. Any product made of bog oak carries a part of the unique energy of the tree that grew centuries before our era and lived an amazing life under water.

Valuable gift from bog oak

Any object made of bog oak has a high artistic and aesthetic value. Furniture, figurines, paintings and other decorative items become collectibles and luxury items. By placing a table or chair made of bog oak in the office, it will be possible to emphasize the high status of the owner.

Bog oak products are a winning gift for both a business partner and a loved one. They can become family heirlooms, serve as a reminder of eternal values and beauty.

Bog oak wood is considered the most expensive in the world. A simple frame for a small photo from this natural material can cost hundreds of rubles. Only the richest people on the planet can afford furniture made from material conserved by nature itself. In our country, there are impressive reserves of this wood, there are technologies for its extraction and processing. That's just the extraction of a valuable resource is often illegal and goes beyond the budget. Why is this happening?

Raising an oak tree from the bottom of a river is not an easy task. The trunk can weigh up to 4-6 tons

Chair for the price of a car

There are dozens of ads on the Internet for the sale of bog oak products. For example, a slab of this wood (a sawn trunk or, simply, an unedged board) is traded at $440 per linear meter. The simplest coffee table is offered for $1,700, and a more powerful TV console for $6,300. A decorative book rack will cost an immodest $3,400. For a square meter of floor board or wall panel, you will have to pay about $ 700. A bar 20x5x5 cm can be bought for 10-15 dollars. There are more radical proposals on our market. For each cubic meter of round timber, they ask for 2-4 thousand euros. And there are buyers.

Bog oak is a unique material, the creation of which nature has spent millennia. In those days, when mammoths walked around the planet, a mighty tree grew on the banks of the river. The water washed away the shore, the oak fell to the bottom. It was covered in silt. For thousands of years, it has been "stained" under exceptional conditions, with little or no access to oxygen. As a result, its structure has changed - it has become much stronger, acquired a noble dark color with silver veins. And the main thing that attracts people is the age of such material. Agree, few people refuse to touch the table, knowing that it is thousands of years old. Where are the antiques!

The fishery was covered with silt

In a unique and, speaking professionally, narrow market, only a few firms work legally in our country. One of them is headed by Alexander Dupanov. Back in the 1990s, by sheer chance, he became interested in this topic. He was visited by foreign friends who casually asked about the opportunity to buy a few cubic meters of bog oak. In the end, nothing came of the idea - too many intermediaries had to be involved. But Alexander realized that this business, with a competent approach, has more than real prospects. Since then, for 20 years, the company has been working on technologies for finding, extracting and processing firewood. And along the way, like every businessman, the director of the enterprise with his team carefully monitors the activities of competitors.

Right now we can drive along the banks of the Sozh, and I will show you about a dozen places where stained wood has recently been developed - there are traces of heavy equipment, oak fragments, sawdust, and so on - Alexander met me at his base in Gomel. - The question is how legally the miners operated. I used to travel for days along the section of the river allocated for exploration and production. And invariably met lovers to profit. They tore the wood with tractors, sawed it off in pieces, loaded it into trucks, carts, horse-drawn carts and tried to take it out.

There is no digestible statistics on the world production of valuable raw materials today. Some figures “emerge” only from Soviet times. At that time, the turnover of stained (fuelwood) wood and, in particular, oak, was regulated by the Department for Precious Metals under the Ministry of Finance. In 1937, the Council of People's Commissars even gave instructions to study the issues of stocks and methods of timber extraction. Such studies were carried out on the Sozh, Dnieper and Iput rivers, from where over 3 years even about 2 thousand “cubes” were lifted - a fantastic volume for this type of material!

Alexander Alexandrovich shows a log, which is 7150 years old. He says that these are still old stocks. Since 2015, the enterprise has not been entitled to engage in its main activity - exploration and production directly. The new edition of the Water Code banned the extraction of valuable timber:

Previously, we issued the entire package of permits and legally engaged in our activities. The new law does not seem to prohibit oak mining, in any case, there is no direct ban and the term “fuel wood” does not appear there, however, the procedure for legalizing such activities has become impossible to go through.

Perhaps this could be an end: it is forbidden to get stained wood out of the water and there is nothing more to talk about. However, for “black” miners, as in other profitable areas, prohibitions are a side effect.

Vendors with a tarnished reputation

On the Internet I find such offers: “I will sell bog oak, about 2 cubic meters”, “Bog oak-round timber, 4 trunks, butt diameter from 55 to 88 cm”, “Selling firewood (bog) oak, almost black on the cut, 2 dry logs. Pickup".

I'm calling under the guise of a buyer. Interested in a number of questions. First, is there any guarantee that it is oak and not aspen? Secondly, will there be evidence that it is bog oak, and not soaked in the nearest puddle? And, thirdly (and most importantly), when and where was the wood mined? After all, it has been impossible to legally conduct this trade for 4 years already.

Dialogues are standard. A seller from the Zhlobin region wants to get as much as 150 dollars for each cubic meter of his production. For reference, a “cube” of high-quality lumber from ordinary pine costs about the same:

Hello, is wood available? Where is it stored? Is that really oak?

In the yard under a canopy. It has been lying since June, it has already dried up. What am I, I can’t tell the oak? Yes, see for yourself.

Where was it obtained?

The boys swam in the Dnieper, groped near the shore. Pulled out of there. The lads will confirm if you don't believe me.

Is it possible to pull out oaks just like that? Or do you have documents?

What documents do I need? Consider that I prepared firewood for myself and at the same time did a good deed - I cleared the beach.

Mozyrian fished out oak trunks from Pripyat in the spring:

The water came down and they appeared. Probably washed out from under the shore. What is the price? You understand that this is not some kind of birch, this is bog oak! It is very expensive. I won't give you less than a thousand dollars for a "cube".

He also has no production documents, as well as other evidence of the purity of the transaction.

Image - in the furnace?

Sellers are trying to gently dictate terms, which means that there is demand. But something else is curious: all their activities, it turns out, are illegal. Moreover, it can be regarded not only as theft, but also pure sabotage.

It is not enough to find and raise a tree from the bottom, - says Alexander Dupanov. - After all, under the influence of oxygen, the processes of its destruction immediately begin. For example, the natural moisture content of an ordinary tree is about 70 percent. Firewood can have 150-200 percent. In the process of improper drying, waterlogged wood tears, it crumbles into chips.

Indeed, the process of “drying” bog oak is very long and painstaking. Lasts, as they say in some sources, almost a year, moreover, under certain conditions. Few home-grown businessmen will wait that long, and therefore the amount of initially high-quality, but hopelessly damaged wood is simply catastrophic, says Alexander, based on his personal experience. As a result, more than 90 percent of raw materials go to waste. He tells cases when the logs were sent by wagons to the customer, but along the way they managed to lose their characteristics and were sent to the furnaces. In 2006, at one reputable woodworking enterprise, round timber was successfully sawn into boards, but then about 100 “cubes” of finished products were burned. And from the next batch of 150 cubic meters, in the end, only 30 were saved. As a result, the cost of the remaining material was simply crazy. But in these cases, experienced people worked, not like the majority of small “predators”. As a result, the country is rapidly losing one of its most valuable natural resources, although it could make it its own brand and improve its image on the international market of precious materials.

Stained wood is a non-renewable resource. What we extract from the water will never be replenished. Its reserves around the world are more than modest. The account goes to hundreds of thousands of "cubes". According to Alexander Dupanov, only in the last 20 years and only our country has lost tens of thousands of “cubes” of oak. Most of it, no matter how blasphemous it may sound, went to firewood. In particular, not a single coastal dweller will pass by a huge oak tree, which is perfectly sawn when raw, and burns perfectly when dried. A lot of raw materials are spoiled by miners and processors. How many? Every week Alexander receives 2-3 calls supposedly from oak buyers. Interested in cost. And they disappear. In the vast majority of cases, these are sellers who monitor the real prices for relic wood. There are dozens, if not hundreds, Alexander estimates. And, therefore, you can imagine the real volume of trade. At the same time, not so many raw materials are physically “thrown out” on the market. Most likely, everything else is lost:

The extraction of bog oak can often be compared with the harvesting of non-ferrous metals: if it lies poorly, then they will definitely “whistle”. I would not be surprised if every second owner of a sawmill in the vicinity of large rivers has fuel wood, - says Alexander Dupanov. - Many customers among the owners of cottages. And what master cabinetmaker refuses to work with a unique material? And if there is demand, there will be supply. Which is exactly what we are seeing. It is enough to turn to the guys from any coastal village, and they will drag the required amount of wood to order.

In the legal vein

As a rule, the “black” market develops under special conditions. On the one hand, it must be admitted that the circulation of bog oak today is not regulated in any way. On the other hand, under the new Water Code, even official producers were forced to curtail their activities. Demand has remained the same.

Earlier, according to BelTA, Andrei Khmel, Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, said that the reserves of bog oak in Belarus were not officially calculated: “But this resource exists. This is evidenced by studies of individuals, we own this information. This is a rather expensive material, specific in processing.” The result - at the moment, the department's specialists have prepared a draft document "On some issues of extraction and circulation of amber and firewood." In turn, the head of the main department of natural resources of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Vasily Kolb, confirms that the decision to establish legal order in this area was not spontaneous:

From time to time we were approached by individuals and commercial structures. We understood that sooner or later the issue would be posed point-blank, and therefore we carefully prepared for changes in legislation. In particular, the notorious Water Code, which actually banned the fishing of firewood, can be regarded as a pause. We needed time to collect data on this resource.

There are several leitmotifs of the draft of the new decree. For example, the Ministry of Natural Resources proposes to completely ban the export of round oak abroad - firewood, as a particularly valuable raw material, must be processed domestically, creating goods with high added value. In addition, when fishing, it will be necessary to be guided by project documentation, which has necessarily passed an environmental review, and coordinate actions with local authorities. In the case of extracting firewood without excavation or dredging, the fisherman will also need to acquire a technological map.

The "roll" of the project is obvious - towards the protection of nature. It is understandable - any intervention in the regime of the river, especially such a rough one, inevitably entails negative consequences. In addition, says Vasily Kolb, after the extraction of wood to the surface, in many cases, the troubles of the watercourse and adjacent territories do not end:

Under water, it is impossible to distinguish a bog oak from the same birch or Christmas tree. Appropriate analyzes can only be carried out after the tree is brought ashore. But fishermen need only oak. Q: Where does the rest of the wood go? I can assume: either it is dumped back into the water, or it litters the shores, or (and this is the best, but unlikely option) is given to the locals for firewood.

These barbaric methods should no longer be used. Moreover, stained wood is recognized as a particularly valuable resource on a par with, say, amber. This can be judged at least by the rates of the environmental tax on the extraction of driftwood. For comparison: the withdrawal from the bowels of the earth of each ton of building sand for a business entity according to the Tax Code costs 5 kopecks, rock salt - 75 kopecks, facing stone - 1.65 rubles, brown coal - 1.7 rubles, grape snail - 30 rubles. And bog oak - 69 rubles. At the same time, in the 1990s, the state enterprise "BelGeo" assessed the predicted reserves of stained wood on the territory of the country. It was about 500 thousand cubic meters of resource. It is easy to calculate what the benefit can be.

For now, there is nothing to brag about. According to available data, in the period from 2010 to 2014, only 1.5 thousand cubic meters of firewood oak were actually identified for industrial production. And raised - again, according to some sources - only 123.8 "cubes". If there is movement in this area, then it is deep in the “shadow”, Vasily Kolb sums up:

It does not matter how many organizations and for how long have been working in the field of driftwood fishing. There are facts. Starting to study this issue, we made appropriate requests to the tax authorities. In 2014, one payer paid taxes for the extraction and removal of bog oak. There were two in 2015. There is no information about exports at all.

Precious but not metals

Despite the colossal cost of bog oak, there are more valuable tree species on the planet. And the point is not only in their technical characteristics, but also in distribution.

Grenadil is an African ebony native to Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and is endangered due to poaching. Its matte black wood is very beautiful. Today, according to some reports, the cost of a cubic meter of this material (if, of course, it appears on sale) can easily exceed 100 thousand dollars.

Ebony. There are in Africa, South India and Ceylon. The market value of a cubic meter is up to 100 thousand dollars.

Buckout (iron tree). It grows in Haiti, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Jamaica, Guatemala and Cuba. The cost of a cubic meter in some years reached 80 thousand dollars.

Rosewood, originally from Brazil, has long been in demand among cabinetmakers for its unusual pink or red wood structure. Hence the price - more than 50 thousand dollars per "cube".

Agarwood from South Asia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam or Laos has exceptional aromatic properties. The most exquisite incense is made from wood and resin in India, Japan and the Arab countries. Of course, agar is not sold in cubes, and a kilogram of it costs an average of about 5-7 thousand dollars.

To the point

Maxim Ermokhin, Candidate of Biological Sciences, Leading Researcher at the Institute of Experimental Botany of the National Academy of Sciences:

Bog oak actually has an increased value, but not so much that a hype is created around it. Judge for yourself. From the point of view of physical and chemical properties, it is not much different from ordinary oak wood. Thanks to the tannins contained in the structure, it is simply preserved, the decomposition processes slow down, in fact, the wood only changes color. This material mainly attracts people with its appearance. In the usual nature of our country, a similar color of wood - from dark brown to almost black - does not occur. And the same furniture made from exotic natural materials is always highly valued. Once upon a time, oaks were even artificially stained - they were immersed in water for 20-30 years, so that children and grandchildren could use them in due time.

Is bog oak worth the increased attention we are seeing at the moment? Definitely, but to a greater extent from the point of view of nature conservation. If some private structures will be engaged in the extraction of stained wood, the role of the state in this process is to control the careful use of natural resources.

Bog oak is a precious wood material with silver-gray noble veins that has absorbed history. For centuries and millennia, sunken oak trunks have been at the bottom of reservoirs, where, without access to air, in the process of staining, they gradually acquired strength that is not inferior to stone.

Nature itself, having given bog oak its durability and unique color scheme, has determined its unique properties. You can't find a more beautiful wood texture. That is why a significant difference between bog oak products is that neither dyes nor varnishes are used in their manufacture. The color of the wood speaks for itself: delicate pale shades indicate the age of staining at 300-400 years, and the black color is acquired over more than 1000 years of staining.

In historical descriptions, one can find the name of bog oak as "ebony" and "iron tree". Such names are due to the properties of wood, but we are talking about oak aged under water. It is characteristic that in Russia there was no concept of "cabinet worker" - craftsmen working with elite wood were called precisely "cabinet makers". And today, following the age-old traditions of the craftsmen, they respect the natural originality of each piece of material they work with, revealing and presenting its best qualities. Therefore, bog oak is used today not only and not so much as a finishing material, but also as a source of inspiration for creating genuine works of art. How to recreate the effect of bog oak when processing wood can be found in the article "".

"Bog oak" (the name comes from the French "marais" - swamp), commonly calledblack, is oak wood, mineralized with metal salts in natural conditions. For many hundreds of years, due to erosion of the banks and changes in the course of rivers, coastal oak groves were under water. Under the influence of tannin (gallotannic acid), the wood changes its chemical composition there.

As a result, bog oak has acquired unique physical properties: strength, durability, unique colors. Since all tree trunks are in different conditions, each log acquires a unique composition and color. Depending on the amount of metal salts (mainly iron) contained in the river water and the amount of tannins contained in the wood, oak was colored from pinkish to black.

The tone and intensity of the color depended on natural conditions, as well as on the time of mineralization. To acquire black wood, it takes, on average, from 1000 to 2000 years. The formation of an oak deposit consists of several necessary conditions: the presence of oak forests on the shore, the speed of the river flow, favorable for the process of mineralization, the saturation of water with metal salts, a certain composition of river alluvium and the time factor. From this it follows that bog oak is a truly unique material, since the probability of joining all of the above factors is quite small.

It is impossible to say when bog oak was first discovered, but the history associated with it is impressive. One of the legends says that the walls of the fortress, erected by Prince Rurik on the shores of Lake Ilmen in the 9th century AD, were made from this tree, and is considered one of the first fortifications in Russia. There are also undeniable facts that thrones for the rulers of imperial powers were made from bog oak. And there is evidence of this: the throne of King James II in Great Britain or the throne of Peter I, made by English craftsmen as a gift to the sovereign. The miraculous properties of bog oak interested Peter so much that he ordered “... to catch this wood, and strict accounting for the trunks…” Later, in 1712, he presented Ekaterina Alekseevna with a box of bog oak as one of the wedding gifts.

Presenting gifts from "ebony" on especially solemn occasions subsequently became a tradition that continued until the revolution. Cabinets, armchairs, bureaus were presented for anniversaries and official appointments. Caskets, caskets, figurines were presented to the ladies at the wedding and on the day of the angel.And the bog oak decoration of the premises clearly testified not only to the viability of a person, but also to his weight in society. Since this material has always been elite, and access to it had to be earned.

To the share of the traditions of extraction and manufacture of products from bog oak during the last century there have been many trials. Since the resources of this material are not unlimited, there are practically no reserves of bog oak left in Europe. Therefore, before the revolution, the material mined in Russia was mainly supplied to Europe, where interiors were created in the royal courts - stairs, railings and other parts of the decor of the houses of the august persons were decorated with bog oak.

For a long time, bog oak has been developed in an artisanal way: the trunks were found in the water by prospectors and pulled to the surface almost by hand. Later, an industrial method for the extraction of this elite material was also developed; it was used by the Moscow-Kazan Railway joint-stock company. Then, due to the outbreak of the First World War, the extraction of bog oak had to be closed, and all contracts with the Europeans were canceled. Later, the development of deposits was revived with varying success.

In February 1948, by a decree of the party and the government of the USSR, the process of extraction and processing of bog oak was recognized as unprofitable, as a result of which the Saransk Republican Office, the only enterprise dealing with bog oak in the USSR, was abolished. Thus, in Russia, despite centuries of experience in the extraction and processing of this material, bog oak was "crossed out of the list" for a period of about 60 years.

Today, the lost is reborn. Although it is available only to experienced professionals. This is a very complex and lengthy process that requires a lot of labor and resources. Previously, before the start of the season, experts explore several hundred kilometers of river beds, analyzing the features of the banks, the speed of the current, the depth and composition of the river bottom. In places of alleged deposits, at different depths, scuba divers literally touch the bottom of the river in search of sunken trunks, dig out the area around found oaks in order to be able to get ashore using modern technical means. Further, the raw materials are processed, transported, sorted and dried. And only after 3 years of drying the material is selected for further processing.

Bog oak is a very capricious material, capable of losing its original beauty and properties in just a few hours in the open air, being left “without an eye”. The oak trunk must be cut within a few days, otherwise it becomes unusable. This is one of its features known only to blacksmiths.

Even ordinary wood requires drying. And the process of drying bog oak is a long and painstaking work that cannot fail: after all, if the wood is not properly dried, its internal stresses will sooner or later turn into cracks. Bog oak must be dried in conditions close to natural: a little dry air, a little wind, a little humidity - everything is like in nature, only this is provided in a special room. Moreover, after the completion of the drying process, which lasts for several years, only a minimum percentage of the total extracted wood biomass remains suitable for further manufacture of products. The resulting material is carefully selected and sorted by geometric dimensions, color, density, texture for the subsequent creation of unique works.

It is not surprising that products from bog oak, due to the exceptional complexity of processing the wood itself, can only be made by true experts in their field. At the same time, they are directly interested in their reputation, and a self-respecting manufacturer accompanies its products with a certificate that serves as a guarantor of quality and authenticity.

Based on site materialswww.bogoak.ru