PORTLAND, OR.–Of the 65 companies showing their wares at the American Association of Woodturners symposium this year, 15 were there to sell wood–exotic burls, large slabs of domestic hardwood, and stacks of exotic tropical hardwoods. Most offered a profusion of shapes, sizes, and species. But one dealer, Quiet Echo Farms of North Bend, Ore., had only one thing to sell–pieces from what the owner says is one of the only true American chestnut tree left in the U.S.
  

Once the dominant tree in the forests of the Eastern U.S., the American chestnut was used in vast quantities for flooring and as structural timber in houses and commercial buildings. But a blight that broke out in 1900 and lasted until 1935 wiped out more than 4 billion trees.
  

Earlier this year, Don Fisher, the owner of Quiet Echo Farms in North Bend, Ore., learned that a huge American chestnut tree existed in Clackamas, Ore. The woman who owned it wanted it gone because it was dropping branches in a neighboring bank’s parking lot. Negotiations over the tree’s fate ended last April. Fisher was given two days to get rid of a tree more than 100 feet tall, with a trunk 8 ft. in diameter.
  

He and his crew hauled away 60 tons of timber. The stump alone weighed 27,000 lb. He guesses he has 70,000 board feet, all of which is for sale. But only to the right buyers.
  

“I’m not wholesaling this wood,” Fisher told me. “I’m selling it only to people who want to use it.” Prices for the chestnut at the AAW show were comparable with prices for maple.
  

But Fisher’s experience at the AAW symposium showed him that it isn’t enough to be the only source of a unique wood. Most present-day turners have never worked with chestnut.
  

“They don’t know what to do with it,” Fisher said. “They were coming up to our booth and asking,’what can I do with this?'” Even so, Fisher says he sold about half the wood he brought to the show.

Photo Credit: Jacknouse

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