Spalting Woods

[William Fourness]

The section of Sugar Maple was cut green last spring. It was just a nice section of Sugar Maple. But with some company, a good covering of hardwood sawdust, a nice soaking of water, a covering of black plastic and a sunny warm place to sit for awhile. And look at what happens.
Tree species that have sugar content to them spalt up nicely and the more sugar the better the spalt. Best time to cut wood for spalting is just as the bud start to appear.
Got the room and some green wood try to spalt some.


Thanks
Bill

[Bruce Shiverdecker]

Thanks for the tutorial. It does work, accidently been there, done that!

Bruce

[Bernie Weishapl]

Thanks Bill for the info. That looks like it will make a awesome bowl.

[George Tokarev]

You might find this interesting. http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/techline/producing-spalted-wood.pdf

It's the sugar in the cellulose that counts, then the lignin. Moisture, temperature and time is what it takes. I like to lay the log on its side and roll it after a couple of months to equalize the spalt better for cross-grain orientations. Putting the piece on its end seems to leave sound wood up, punky down, and a narrow spalted interface.

Birch, which has tenacious waterproof bark is my favorite. As the paper notes, high concentrations of sugar are not required, and may encourage the wrong types of fungi or even stop the process as the alcohol created by the yeast which feeds on sugar can kill them. Also kills the yeast if the concentration of ethanol gets to around 15%, as the winemakers know.

[Jonathon Spafford]

Wow that will be some fun wood to turn! Awesome stuff... make sure you post a pic when it is turned! Would love to see it!!!

[Bob Hallowell]

Jonathon,
Bill doesn't turn he just collects alot of wood and spalts some so others can get it from him and have some fun. I was just up there last week and bought some of his stock.

Bob