Spalted or Just Plain Ash?

[Bill Space]

Hi,

A couple years ago I took down a standing dead ash tree that succumbed to the emerald ash borer. It probably stood dead for a couple, maybe several years.

I took the base to a guy who cut it and kiln dried it for me. He told me it was very hard wood, compared to what he normally cuts.

So I am now using it to trim five windows, that have three panes and are about 4x6 feet in size. Need about 90 pieces of various sizes to accomplish this. But that is another story...

I did not select boards but rather just took what I needed off the top of the "pile".

I actually like these boards a lot. Wondering how many more like this I have as I just took maybe 5% of what I have so far.

While many look like normal wood, some look like this (8" +/- wide):
356697

356699


Sorry, I tried rotating the images before uploading a second time, but they appear the same afterwards.

Did this tree start to spalt, or is this simply what one normally finds inside an ash tree?

In any case, I like the grain pattern...

Bill

[Brian Tymchak]

IMHO, hard to say if it's spalted or not. Not too much if it is. The lighter colored blotches in the middle of the board on the top (or right with rotation) look like the beginning of rot. But if it is solid, then that is some interesting lumber. I've worked with Ash building my workbench and now a timberframe-inspired lumber rack. It is normal to find a fair amount of color variation in Ash. I believe I have only used White Ash, although if other varieties were mixed in I couldn't say. Other varieties might have even more variation and I suspect that the local soils where the tree grew have a lot to do with it too.

[Bill Space]

This stuff is very hard throughout. I guess the root cause for my question must have been that something did not equate in my mind. Those white spots are not soft as one would expect if rotted. Perhaps it is an early stage of rot that was stopped in the kiln.

I have no experience working with spalted lumber. From the looks of that piece, one would think those white areas should be soft, but they are not. My impression is that spalted wood is soft. I will have to do some reading on spalting of wood and learn more.

I have about 300 BF all from the same tree. Most of it is like one would expect, but some is interesting like in the photos above.

Bill

[Alex Snyder]

I have only seen a single Green Ash with some spalting in it, so I'm not a big expert in Ash spalting. But all the spalting I've come across (multiple North American species) has had a combination of dark and light areas. Usually the dark (greyish or bluish nearly black colors) are thin while the lighter parts are chunkier. You've got the lighter parts, but I'm not seeing any dark lines. It could be you dried it at the beginning of the spalting process.

[Art Mann]

Looks like spalted lumber to me. I have some spalted pecan lumber that looks similar and it is some hard tough wood to work. Spalting is always a decay process and you have to monitor it carefully to not let it go too far. Whatever caused the dramatic grain pattern, it is special and deserves to have something really nice made out of it.