December 19th 2011. Richard, Chris and John Jr. headed deep into the forests of the Queen Charlotte's to bring down a 500 year old Sitka tree for guitar tops. Aside from a logging road in, there are no paths cut through the forest to get to these snags. You must hike through natures floor dodging branches, jumping trunks and leaping streams. This particular tree had been dead for 10 or 15 years. The term "snag" refers to a dead standing tree. This one measured about 5 or so feet at the base and was about 160 feet tall. It took Richard about 12 minutes to fall it. You never know how good it's going to be inside, is it good enough for tone wood? Only about 1 in 1000 tree's are. You can get a pretty good idea from reading the outside of the tree. Some things to look for are compression, twist and knots. This tree had no signs of these issues which made it a great candidate.