Kauri Gum

Some of the Kauri gum we found on Ponui Island... Beautiful stuff..

-A bit of a history about Kauri gum...

- The Maori had many uses for the gum, which they called "kapia". Fresh gum was used as a type of chewing-gum (older gum was softened by soaking and mixing with juice of the puwha thistle). Highly flammable, the gum was also used as a fire-starter, or bound in flax to act as a torch. Burnt and mixed with animal fat, it made a dark pigment for moko tattooing
-Since the kauri gum was found to mix more easily with linseed oil, at lower temperatures, than other resins, by the 1890s, 70% of all oil varnishes made in England used kauri gum.