Scent of the sandal

Miscellany

A favourite souvenir from Mysore is the famed sandalwood artifacts and products.

 Sandalwood is an evergreen, parasitic tree that burrows its roots into other trees. It can grow up to 9 metres (30 feet) high and has a brown-grey trunk, smooth slender branches, leathery leaves and small pink-purple flowers.In the early 20th Century, Mysore was one of the largest producers of sandalwood in the world and during the First World War, large reserves of sandalwood were left over because they could not be exported due to the war. 

In order to make good use of these reserves, Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar, the king of Mysore took the advice of his Diwan, Sir M Visvesvaraya and established the Government Soap Factory in Bangalore. The factory started in Bangalore in 1916, was shifted to Mysore in 1917. It is housed in a heritage building adjacent to the Railway Workshop at Ashokapuram, off Mananthavadi Road. 

The products are manufactured by the Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Limited (KS&DL) in Bangalore. Now the factory is more like a tourist place as there is hardly any sandalwood left for processing. At the entrance of this factory, you will see a beautiful relic – sandalwood branches that are over 100 years old, weighing a whopping 455 kg.

Various stages are involved in the extraction of sandalwood oil and preparation of varied products using it. The procedure of extracting oil from wood involves a series of cutting, chipping, disintegrating wood, distilling the precious oil, filtering and re-filtering. 

The entire process of extracting oil from the sandalwood is fascinating. The sandalwood is first taken from the forest into the factory. The first part consists of the splitting section where the sandalwood is split into smaller pieces. This is then moved to the chipping machine, where the wood is converted to chips. This then moves to a disintegrator unit where the chips are powdered.

 The powder is then lowered into stainless steel containers called stills each of which have a 200 ton capacity. Currently, there are eight available in the factory. 

Steam is injected into this still and there is a cold water cover around the still. The combination of the cold and the hot condenses the steam and vapour to extract the oil from the wood. The oil is scooped out from the top where it separates from the water and is subsequently filtered. After this, the oil is sent to the purification section where sediments are removed and pure oil is finally extracted. 

While the root of the tree yields 60 kg of oil a tonne, the branches and other parts yield just 20 kg. Hit by severe shortage of sandalwood, KSDL has had to participate in auctions in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra for wood. The absence of a sustained sandalwood regeneration programme has a taken a big toll on sandalwood reserves in Karnataka.