Sandalwood, Santalum album heartwood formation occurs when the tree starts to grow older and larger, with the heartwood being filled with aromatic oils in increasing concentration with age, in short decades you get a yellow oily heartwood that has volatile creamy florals, in many decades you get a dense reddish heartwood that is rich beyond words, and up to over a century or more, gets you the densest, resin rich heartwoods that are brown to even shades of black, which the chinese describe as “blackmeat”. Often or not, the heartwood diameters of “black meat” sandalwood are above one feet, one can only imagine how old or how huge the trees had to be to give heartwoods of such grades.
These materials are being made into some of the best beads possible, and the beading scrap material, is collected by KZ, sorted, graded and chipped into smaller pieces and bottled for your convenience. To use, use a small penknife or chisel, or incense wood knife if you have one, to splice a tiny splinter, the size of a basmati rice grain or so, and heat it gently, ideally on a micasheet or on an electric heater, and let the scent take you back into history, into majestic palaces or into the bosoms of a loved one.
Treasure this material well, as it is no longer available from the wild, all we have are the precious remnants that have been left to our generation by our forefathers, and perhaps you might want to keep some for the future generations to enjoy.