About The Wood
What is The King’s Pine?
Among the most valued resources available to the 17th Century English Empire was the Eastern White Pine of Northern New England—the King’s Pine.
These massive pines, which grew in abundance in modern-day Maine and New Hampshire, were considered the finest mast and shipbuilding timber available anywhere. For nearly a century King George I, and his heirs, laid claim to pines on the coastal lands of American colonists by branding them with the King’s Broad Arrow.
From 1691 to 1781 the immense Eastern White Pines were ax branded by surveyors of King George. Quick and harsh punishment was dealt with any colonists found to have harvested a King’s Pine—even if harvested on his own land. Indeed, long before protests over the Stamp and Tea Acts, there was resistance to the litany of King’s Pine prohibitions. So coveted were these mast-sized timbers that the flag flown by revolutionary colonists at the Battle of Bunker Hill was emblazoned with the image of an Eastern White Pine.
Once harvested the King’s Pine was shipped to England’s shipyards where they became the primary timbers used in the construction of the King’s mighty fleet. The surviving Eastern White Pines, from further inland, were used as timber framing during America's Industrial Revolution.
Today these historic timbers survive as the foundation of our King’s Pine Tele-style electric guitars.
