Cut wood to find agarwood
HA TINH – People in Phuc Trach commune, Huong Khe district, cut Do Bau trees to get agarwood to sell,
QUANG NAM – People in Tien My commune, Tien Phuoc district, buy Do Bau trees to cut wood for agarwood, create agarwood scene, and sell each product from a few hundred thousand to tens of millions of dong.
These days, Mr. Do Pham Nhat Linh, 35 years old, from Tien My commune, and two employees are busy working in the incense processing factory.
Holding an electric-powered grinder in his hand, Mr. Linh carefully ground white pieces of wood out of the nearly half-meter-long trunk of the tree. “This is the initial grinding stage to remove the white wood from the trunk. When you encounter a black spot, stop because it’s agarwood. The next stage can’t use an electric machine, but you have to use a hand tool to cut it. directly”, Mr. Linh shared.
Anh Linh was born in the countryside with a tradition of growing and manufacturing agarwood trees (also known as do bass, do Bau). Nearly 20 years ago, Linh learned a trade from his brother and then opened a factory to produce ornamental incense at home. In order to obtain raw materials, he sought to buy agarwood plantations over 10 years old in the district.
Mature agarwood trees average 20 m high, 30-40 cm in diameter, 8-10 m wide canopy. After buying, Mr. Linh drilled holes to create wounds on the trunk and put in the medicine to create agarwood. This drug is processed according to the individual formula of each agarwood establishment. The plant will react to create antibodies around the wound and that is frankincense.
After more than a year in medicine, Mr. Linh plucked the root and stem of the tree and brought it back to the garden, then hired two skilled workers to process it gradually. Depending on the tree position, the worker segmented before grinding and chiseling. In order to produce an ornamental agarwood product, they have to go through many stages including “adding, splitting, chiseling, hewing, breaking, trimming, grinding and polishing the product”.
The white, chiseled wood that falls off will be dried in the sun and cooked with essential oils, or ground to make incense powder. Agarwood (black wood part) is left whole or cut into small pieces and sold in the market.
Each year, Mr. Linh’s facility sells to the market about 500 ornamental frankincense trees and several tons of ingredients for making incense and cooking essential oils. “The profession of hewing requires perseverance, being careful to have a beautiful product and avoid accidents while using a grinder. Three years ago, while I was grinding, I was distracted by a machine cutting my hand”, Mr. Linh speak.
The selling price of agarwood trees depends on the type, from 300,000 VND to several million VND for small products, for indoor decoration; large and export agarwood can be up to several tens of millions of dong.
Inside Mr. Linh’s agarwood workshop, Mr. Do Dinh Luan, 33 years old, Tien My commune, both trimmed a product and shared “with the winding agarwood veins, you must use a chisel to gently scrape each thin layer of wood”. Many complicated products, Mr. Luan had to chisel and trim for a whole month. Luan’s daily salary is 200,000 VND.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong, 35 years old, another worker in the workshop, said that the stage of pruning agarwood is the most difficult, because the closer to the agarwood pulse, the lighter the worker must be.
Mr. Vo Kim Chung, Chairman of the People’s Committee of Tien My Commune, said that there are more than 10 households in the locality that work in the manufacture of aquifer products, giving a stable and better income than farming. “These facilities create jobs for more than 100 workers,” he said.
Follow (vnexpress)
