Spalting experiment - Maple Bowl

[steven carter]

I helped a buddy cut a maple tree from his yard a couple years ago and stored most of the wood in his walk-in basement and some I took home. Much to our surprise, his basement was a perfect spalting environment. I had roughed out a bowl blank with no spalting after having roughed out a couple of the bowls from the basement which had spalted. Wanting to see what would happen, I put the unspalted blank in a plastic garbage bag with some curlies from the spalted bowls, added some water and let sit. Actually I forgot about this until I came across it a while back. When I took it from the bag it was almost completely black. I let it sit and dry out for a few months. LOML wanted a bowl to give as a Christmas present so I thought I would finish turn it and see what it looked like. It ended up about 7 1/2" across and 3 1/4" tall. Finished with home brew oil and then a couple coats of WOP, then buffed and ren waxed.

[Tim Rinehart]

Steven, nice bowl and rim detail. Gotta love that spalted wood...once you start turning and finishing spalted wood...other woods have a hard time competing, in my eye at least.
Nicely done!:)

[Mark Hubl]

Nice bowl. Spalted Maple is one of my favorites. Never quite know what you are going to get and you walk that fine line between turnable and punky. Good job.

[bob svoboda]

Wow! I really like your form and rim treatment..and THAT wood is great. Nicely done!

[John Keeton]

Steve, nice bowl!! The spalting really adds some character, too. The spalting process can either be planned or not, but either way the results can be very rewarding.

[Tony De Masi]

Steve, aside from what the wood brings to this bowl I really like the shape of this one and the rim detail. Really nice job.

[dan carter]

The old saying, " I'd rather be lucky than good " almost applies here, but then you did a good job, so I guess not. It is an attractive bowl.

[charlie knighton]

very nice....

[Baxter Smith]

Nice bowl. I find it fascinating to turn spalted wood. Never know whats going to appear and disappear along the way. I have tried spalting some holly and maple. It worked but not nearly as pretty as some that just happened on its own.