"Fresh" Spalted Maple

W

Wowndeye

Joined
Apr 15, 2014
Messages
88
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but here goes! ;)

I have acquired some pieces of wood I'm almost positive are Spalted Maple. (Sorry, meant to take a picture of them before I left the house this morning.)

They came from a tree in my mom's yard that she thought was a Black Walnut. The tree is roughly 20-25 years old and she had one of the bigger limbs, 20-24 inches diameter or so at thickest, cut off and was cut in to about 24 inch chunks. They've been sitting in her yard and I had no idea what kind of wood it was till she asked me to take a look at them and if I wanted them. To my surprise when I split a couple I saw that it was Spalted Maple I believe. (I'll try and post a picture this evening when I get home if that helps.)

So here's my questions The few already cut pieces have been sitting in the yard for about a year, so they're somewhat seasoned, but because we live in the Northwest, they have sat in the rain for periods of time for sure. I've had them out of the rain for a couple weeks though now. I have an 1 1/2" slab that I've cut out of one to confirm the species and could theoretically use it for a number of knife scales, but I'm wondering how long it should sit before use.

In addition, the rounds and half rounds I have, should I cut them up into particular sizes and store for a certain length of time? And is there a recommended way to cut them for stability or grain orientation?

And when the rest of the tree comes down any recommendations on what size to cut them, how to store them, how long to store them before use, etc...?

Again, the wider pieces are about 20-24" diameter, as they narrow down is there a size where the grain is not as desirable? I've only cut the two pieces so far because I didn't want to butcher too many of them.

The wood isn't impressively hard and it's whiter than I would have expected for Black Walnut so I'm guessing they'll need stabilizing? When I was in boat building, two of the boats we finished had what I was told was Black Walnut but it was all a deep brown throughout as opposed to what I've got so I'm kind of confused.

At the boat yard, I wasn't in the cabinet/finish shop so most of my work was the installation of items made by the cabinet shop so I've never done much work with specific wood species in regards to finishing so know very little about working with/identifying specific woods as well as finishing them in addition to working with steel, so I'm learning a lot right now which is fun!

Thanks!
 
Sitting outside in the open = really wet. You'll need to let them dry for a while. Split the sections into slabs as close to the thickness you'll want and coat the end grain with elmer's glue, wax, latex paint, or buy some wood sealer. Set them indoors somewhere cool and dry for 1 year per 1" thickness. Splitting as opposed to sawing gives you the best chance at parallel grain.
 
Black walnut and maple aren't even close, so it shouldn't be hard to determine which the wood is. Which one is the tree that the branch came off of? :)

Spalting happens when fungus from the ground gets into the wood. If the branches were on the ground for the past year ( and they aren't walnut) it may have spalted to some degree.
It will have to dry slowly for a year or more and then be cut up into blocks which will have to dry an additional six months to a year. You should be good to use that wood in about two years or so.

If you search the past threads, there are many on drying burl and wood. It is a lot more than just cutting it up.
 
Walnut and maple trees have very different leaves. If the tree is still alive looking at the leaves will be the fastest way to see what species it is. If the tree is only 20-25 years old but has(had) a 20+" diameter limb, it must have grown very quickly. (Do you mean 20-24" circumference?) If it's a walnut tree, there may just be a lot of sapwood as the tree is young. A tree that big may have value as lumber, if there's a local sawyer, check with them before cutting the tree down. Lumber from limbs has a lot of what is called "reaction wood" fibers, so expect more shrinkage, warpage, and cracking than you would have in lumber from a tree trunk. That said, cut your blocks a bit oversize and you should be able to get a good yield of usable wood.
 
Thanks for the replies!

Wow... Pardon my apparent dyslexia or whatever you call it. So to clarify, the tree is believed to be Walnut (or Black Walnut... not sure how to tell the difference). It looked spalted and I think since I see the words Spalted Maple more than Spalted Walnut when I'm reading, I just somehow mixed the two in my head and was interchanging them as I wrote! Looks like I wrote the post at about midnight so that'll be my excuse for the mix up! ;)

I did find a little info later on saying when the rest of the tree is cut to leave on end on the ground and lay dirt over the top of the end grain to get it to spalt (which is basically what happened by accident, minus the dirt on top, to the pieces I've got) if it isn't already, then store and dry for a couple/few years. I know people season their wood for about a year before burning for heat but if on "average" if wood takes about a year to dry out, why wait more than that? Does something else happen to the wood over that time? I'll do some more searching on drying the wood for sure though!

As far as the size goes Mahoney, the pieces that I have came off of one of the trunks. It split about 4 feet up or so, so 20-24" is in fact the diameter. Sorry for the further confusion. The largest diameter branches at the trunk are maybe 6" diameter tops.

Here's a couple pictures below of the inside and outside with the bark if someone can identify it from these. I don't have pictures of the actual leaves.

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa45/wowndeye/Mobile Uploads/20140713_093749.jpg

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa45/wowndeye/Mobile Uploads/20140713_093739.jpg

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa45/wowndeye/Mobile Uploads/20140713_093802.jpg

Thanks again!
 
I hate to be a Debbie Downer but I'd bet you'd be disappointed if you dug much deeper. Walnut doesn't typically produce desirable spalt line patterns AFAIK. From your photos it just appears to have some spots of fungus here and there. I'd bet it is sopping wet too, no?

Desirable spalt patterns run through the grain in uniform thickness and are usually highly visible both longitudinally and laterally. A piece that will recover well, dry, stabilize and work to a nice ending pattern is highly visible when first cut. Otherwise it just looks like little dots in the grain.

There are 'spalt farms' that sell large blocks of highly figured spalted maple, peanut, etc etc for not much money. If you don't mind waiting for it to properly dry and having it spabilized, it's a good return on a dollar.

This is a wax sealed, half-dried chunk of spalted maple that I got for just a few bucks from just such a place...

47bd14553ab99afc3c30dc3fbafe250d.jpg


IMO the results are well worth the wait any way you stack it...

99f7152f336951bfc0b3dd2f4e056c15.jpg


Good luck...

-Eric
 
Dont look like walnut to me. Be prepared to deal with cracks on the end of your pieces ( the longer the wood sat the deeper the cracks)- if they have sat in the weather for a while the end grain is probably full of splits, you dont see them now because the wood is still real wet but when you finish drying it you will.
 
Look up "microwaving wood for turning" on Google. This is an established speed drying technique for wood turning. You can dry wood fairly safely and it substantially decreases the wood's tendency to move with humidity changes due to induced changes in the wood's cell structure. Be forewarned that the wood can catch fire if you are not careful, and can stink your microwave/house up.
 
MBB said:
Look up "microwaving wood for turning" on Google. This is an established speed drying technique for wood turning. You can dry wood fairly safely and it substantially decreases the wood's tendency to move with humidity changes due to induced changes in the wood's cell structure. Be forewarned that the wood can catch fire if you are not careful, and can stink your microwave/house up.
Click to expand...
I'm not even gonna get back on my 'never ever ever microwave wood' thing, but this is just all kinds of hogwash... I can't believe how badly this has been perpetuated. Read a wiki on how a microwave works.... If you still don't understand why it's unacceptable... w/e I guess... good luck.

Not to mention pen blanks and the 'stabilizing' done for turners has nothing to do with our world.

-Eric
 
So you're saying I got nothing... ;) The pieces are actually pretty dry. I don't have a moisture meter to check exact content, but they're not bad. I'm going to play around with a couple pieces and see what I get out of them just to have an idea of what might be possible for the rest and see whether it's worth even harvesting.

I'm not opposed to purchasing from good suppliers, I've got quite a few chunks from a Woodcrafters and we have Gilmer wood about 30 minutes away that I plan on visiting soon. I just thought it would be nice to possibly have what would end up being an endless supply of this particular wood. Oh well though... The ends do have some big cracks, but for the most part the pieces I've got are pretty solid. I don't know if that will change or not though. I'll be passing on the microwave idea though. I don't need any more problems! ;)

I'll have to take a picture of the tree itself next time I'm out there because I'm pretty sure it's a Walnut tree from the pictures I compared it to. I don't know what else it would be. Will update then!

Thanks for the input again.
 
Pictures of the whole tree, a close up of the leaf, and the bark will clear it all up.

Take what you have and cut it into oversize blocks and let it sit for six months or so, and then cut it up into scales and handle blocks and let them sit for a while.
 
How heavy is it? To be honest, it looks a lot like the spalting poplar I have at the cabin.
 
You could take it to a local saw mill, saw it, then air dry the lumber stacked with wood spacers (not sure what they are called in English but they are just pieces of wood between the lumber to keep air circulating) outside under a piece of corrugated steel for a year or two.

Or you could have them run the wood in their lumber dryer (kiln?)
 
Not saying you have nothing, many woods have character that can be brought out through careful slicing and prep... Just saying it won't be as strikingly spalted as some... Take Stacy's advice, that's the proper way to dry it. Check it with a quality moisture meter (not harbor freight, a good Wagner meter for example) a lot of specialty wood suppliers and small mills, wood reclamation places etc will probably have one. We want single digit moisture levels usually for sending out to stabilize...


-Eric
 
Bjorn1 said:
You could take it to a local saw mill, saw it, then air dry the lumber stacked with wood spacers (not sure what they are called in English but they are just pieces of wood between the lumber to keep air circulating) outside under a piece of corrugated steel for a year or two.

Or you could have them run the wood in their lumber dryer (kiln?)
Click to expand...

Bjorn,
In English, they are called "stickers" or "bats" ( short for batons).
 
You're going to like Gilmer woods... I spent an hour or two there perusing on a trip and could've spent the whole day. They have a big building just full of a TON of incredible wood. They had a giant bin full of pieces of African Blackwood for really cheap. Lots of different species and sizes to choose from. Sooooo much cool wood :).

Sorry, just had to get it out after I saw the comment about Gilmer wood...

Jeremy
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top