Spalted walnut bowl

[Toby Bouder]

This large walnut tree was cut into billets and left to sit on the ground for a number of months before it was given to me.. A lot of the sapwood started to spalt giving it a striped pattern. 7.5" x 3.75" Watco Butcher Block finish.
C&C welcome.

[Mark Hubl]

Cool looking walnut.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Boy that is some awesome walnut.

[Toby Bouder]

Boy that is some awesome walnut.


Cool looking walnut.

Thanks Mark and Bernie. The blank was cut from the tree at an odd angle giving the grain a different orientation than what I am used to.

[Russell Eaton]

A good looking bowl indeed. Look like it is end grain, I like it.

[Chris Studley]

Very Cool...


In the top view, It looks as though it is being torn apart and the spalt lines add to the effect.

beautiful.

nice finish as well.

[Ryan Mooney]

Gorgeous piece of wood and really great job on the bowl.

(warning nerd mode on):
I'm going to slightly disagree on it being spalted (at least from what I can see), I believe it was more "natural" walnut darkening as distinguished from spalting which is caused by (depending on how pedantic you feel :rolleyes:) fungus or perhaps minerals inclusion/uptake from the environment.

Some searching turned up a research paper on this topic : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FPL00009716?LI=true

The short version is that phenolic compounds that (primarily) reside at the sapwood/heartwood transition react with the juglone and make the heartwood dark.

I found this out the hard way, I had a handful of really nice sapwood + heartwood walnut crotch bowls that I packed in the still wet shavings (this was a bad idea for other reasons which we'll skip here :D). Pulling them out a few weeks later they're mostly chocolate everywhere with some small amount of sapwood color left. Personally I liked the sapwood color so was a little choked up about it and decided to try & figure out what happened.. which is how I found the above.

[Toby Bouder]

Gorgeous piece of wood and really great job on the bowl.

(warning nerd mode on):
I'm going to slightly disagree on it being spalted (at least from what I can see), I believe it was more "natural" walnut darkening as distinguished from spalting which is caused by (depending on how pedantic you feel :rolleyes:) fungus or perhaps minerals inclusion/uptake from the environment.

Some searching turned up a research paper on this topic : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FPL00009716?LI=true

The short version is that phenolic compounds that (primarily) reside at the sapwood/heartwood transition react with the juglone and make the heartwood dark.

I found this out the hard way, I had a handful of really nice sapwood + heartwood walnut crotch bowls that I packed in the still wet shavings (this was a bad idea for other reasons which we'll skip here :D). Pulling them out a few weeks later they're mostly chocolate everywhere with some small amount of sapwood color left. Personally I liked the sapwood color so was a little choked up about it and decided to try & figure out what happened.. which is how I found the above.
Thanks for the compliment and info Ryan.
Wow, quite a research paper. Not sure I really want to know all that (even if I could understand it). That could be the cause of the streaks, but I wouldn't know how to explain that to anyone. I think I'll just call it "spalting" since at least some people would know want I'm talking about.

[Donny Lawson]

You have a nice looking bowl there. Nice shape and a good finish.

[Ryan Mooney]

Thanks for the compliment and info Ryan.
Wow, quite a research paper. Not sure I really want to know all that (even if I could understand it). That could be the cause of the streaks, but I wouldn't know how to explain that to anyone. I think I'll just call it "spalting" since at least some people would know want I'm talking about.

Heh I thought it was interesting because it helped explain how to keep the white sapwood color. Get it cut and dry moderately quickly, not to hot or wet and seal it up to keep the oxygen away seems to the short version. Its sort of funny because most of the literature I could find was about how to color the sapwood, when in this specific case the opposite was desired.

[Doug W Swanson]

Great bowl. The wood grain is just awesome!

[Steve Schlumpf]

This works! Nice form - beautiful wood! You should be happy with this one!