Spalting Wood....

[Corey Hallagan]

I know I have seen it on this forum before but I will be darned if I can find it. I have some hard maple and some poplar that I would like to see if I can get it to spalt. I want it to get some spalting but I don't want it to rot and get soft and punky. Oh buy the way, these are not in log form but dry to 10% and are 3 in sqare by 6 inch length. Any wood spalt easier than others?
Thanks as always for any help.
Corey

[Rob Bourgeois]

I spalted some maple and cottonwood by laying it on my garage(shop) all winter...just in log form from a green tree cut around Halloween. I didnt do anything special to it. I will have picture as soon as the finish is "finished"

Putting with dirt/leaf debris contact is supposed to work but all I ended up with was firewood..and not very good firewood.

[Bruce Shiverdecker]

Being dry wood, it's hard to get it to spalt. You might try letting a piece of it set outside, in the shade, but where it can get rained on and where it can set on earth. That might start something happening. Rather than ruining all of it, you might take a smaller piece to use as a trial.

Bruce

[Forrest Price]

There is an excellent article on this at another location on the web. The article is copyrighted, so I can't post it here and I'm sure it'd go against policy to post the link here as it's another forum. PM me if you'd like the link to it.

Someone correct me about the link to a different forum if I'm wrong. :confused:

Thanks.

[Chris Barton]

Hi Corey,

If the wood is dry it is almost impossible to get it to spalt. The wood interior needs to be wet for the fungus to grow. You could try to saturate the wood with water and then give it a go but, I think that rehydration would cause all sorts of splitting and cracking in the wood. Try it with green wood. Put it under a tarp in a shady area for a few months and keep it relatively damp/wet and you will have spalted wood...

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

I was asking about this on another thread, I went to the Dungeon annex and checked, and this is what I came back with......

42178

42179

If it has fungus growing all over it (under the wax) then I guess this might be this "Spalting" that eveyone is talking about.

I was not trying either!

I guess I got to put that aircon in the Dungeon Annex, too moist in there now.....

Cheers!

[Corey Hallagan]

Ok, well it sounds like no deal on the dry wood then. Got some wet wood and I will give that a try as well. Stu, you are going to have some goodies under that gunk!

Corey