Resawing Ash Problem

[Martin C Wells]

I just started resawing some 8/4 ash that was kiln dried then stored in a garage for several year and inside the wood there is a grayish color that I've never seen before. The wood has an internal M/C of 10-12%. Is this unusual or what?

[Paul Symchych]

Could that be spalting?

[Mark Levitski]

Upon milling a large ash log recently we discovered the same color. We soon found out it was discoloration from a piece of metal (large spike I think). It was a rather large color plume. Perhaps this is the cause. I have yet to sharpen the 6 foot chainsaw blade on the mill-uggh!

[Jim Matthews]

Is it a dark shade, almost blue?

I had some white oak with this stain ingrained. It almost looks like ebony.

[Martin C Wells]

No it's not sticker stain or spalting. It is only visible after the wood is sliced. I was hoping to use it for stairway trim, I'll just monitor it for a few weeks.

[Brian Tymchak]

I built an Ash workbench and discoloration as you describe was fairly common in the ~200 bf that I worked with. Maybe 30% of the lot had discoloration in it. Since it was a workbench project, I wasn't too concerned about color consistency of the boards. Your question though reminded me to do a little Google research about that this morning as I've wondered in the past what caused the discoloration. Surprisingly, I found very little information about it. I guess I'll stick with my opinion that it's a reflection on the mineral content of the soil at the time the tree grew those rings.

One thing I have noticed with my workbench is that the gray, blue, and pink discolorations all ended up as different shades of brown when finished with an oil/varnish blend (I used Watco Teak oil). Try some finish on a sample board and see if the end result is acceptable.