Discovery of the Miracle Star

First, you should know that I am a persistent and incurable woods enthusiast.  Anyone that would travel to the North Shore of Minnesota in December to gather driftwood and other forest products is awfully dedicated to his pursuit.  Now, driftwood is not the source itself for the Miracle Stars but collecting driftwood as indicated by the photo is partly responsible for our discovery.

On the particular driftwood trip to the North Shore we also stopped on our way home at a forest area in the Lake Milacs vicinity. We generally cut Christmas trees in this area.  In addition to the Christmas tree we also harvested some tree branches that we intended to use for manufacturing small Christmas tree ornaments.

Of course, driftwood or tree branches being natural objects in nature can give you certain surprises as well as rewards when you bring them into your home for storage and processing.  Imagine my surprise when some discs that I cut turned out to be the dwelling place of this worm.  Yes trees, dead and alive, are homes for all sorts of creatures.

What we would typically do with branches such as the one you see here is to cut them into thin wafer like pieces.  Then we carefully sand and finish the pieces and finally we laser engrave images on the wood surface and then sell them in our company's gift shop.

 We have tried all species of wood for the items that we would make and sell.

And we fashioned wood discs in different ways.  This example is from a piece of popple (it's a type of popler), one side we dyed red and one side green, the center star is a laser cut out and the insert is red alder with a child's face on one side and the year on the other.  The grandparents of this little girl cherish this ornament

Here's another example of Christmas tree ornaments.  We cut black cherry discs, polished them and then laser engraved animal tracks one them.  Outdoors people, especially hunters, enjoy this kind of ornament and we enjoy making them.  They are wonderful gifts.

The actual story of the discovery of the Miracle Star may best be told on the back of one of our plaques.

This cross section is actually the same piece of wood shown above but it has some oil applied to it that reveals the discovery that we made just a few years ago, a perfect five pointed star in it's center.  Oddly enough the star was invisible before the oil or a coat of varnish is added. We had never before seen a star in wood.  It obviously was what is called the pith of the tree.  That's the original stem that sprouts from the seed and the pith is almost always visible in any tree or branch.  But a star was new to us. Immediately I tried to identify where I'd gotten the branch, what kind of tree it was and anything else that would help me to know whether there was more examples of the wood with the stars.

I did know by the appearance of the wood that it was some kind of oak and I did know the general vicinity in which I found the wood but that was about all I had to go on.

The front side of the plaque bears the inscription the three wise men and the inlay of the natural Miracle Star.

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