Making spalted logs!

[T Welsh]

Hey guys, this is a test to see if I could make spalting in logs go faster. 1 year old logs put in the back corner of property under pine tree,s so they would not dry out. looks pretty good, plan to saw the up in the next month or so. will let you know how it turns out. Tim

[zopi]

tough to control that...a worthy experiment though...I have some spalted holly turning blanks out in the shop...I had a holly stump that I had hauled out as a favor to a friend, and I was being lazy, and it was close to the mill, so I chucked it up there and split it to make it easier to move..all of it was white, spalted black...pretty wood.

[T Welsh]

Zopi, these are low grade logs, beech,maple,and sweet gum. I was going to get to them and cut them up for blocking. well, I just looked at them the other day and saw they are growing mushrooms by themselves, so now I called it an exercise in spalting. my lame excuse for not getting around to them!!! Tim

[Kansas]

We have been experimenting trying to spalt lumber by dead stacking it and shrink wrapping. So far, not getting the results I want. Trying it with hackberry so far. We did three smaller bundles. We unpacked the first two at different intervals and stickered them. The third one is still dead stacked. We will put a few more months on that. The reason we are doing it is trying to do it in the log is so unpredictable. We can get a lot better money for good spalted lumber, hence the experiment.

[Satamax]

T Welsh, i think by the looks of the ends, cut theses soon.

There's few discutions over the MIMF forum about spalting, in the library's wood section. You have to register to read it, but registering is free.

Most of the guys say, use cut wood it's easier to control the spalting. Either burry it. Not nice on, planer knives imho.  In guitarmaking they use plastic garbage bags sealed with the wood inside. 20 to 28% humidity content in the wood, keep it that way two to 4 months, may be eight if the planks are thick and need to be turned over.  You can enhance it with chips of spalted wood in the bag. Good idea is to keep some water in the bag, and keep all this in a hot environement, like a boiler room.  And you can use wine or beer as a "starter".

Never tried it of my own.  But i have experience thought.  I have my workshop in an old french mews, half underground vaulted 3 or 400 years old building, may be older. The ground in the part i don't work is earth ground. And i have my wood rack there, since i can't have it anywhere else, and i cut my wood there, since i don't have to clean too much. Leaving a pile of ofcuts in plastic fruits crates. One day my landlord cut open a boar next to all this. Letting the blood and guts go on the ground till he dumped it later that night. You bet, two or three month later, i had "merule" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_rot  in the offcut pile and some lovely spalted  pieces of wood. Some sound, some completely roten. So a good starter could be blood and intestines of game.

There's a reference of spalting your own wood  article in fine woodworking about 2000, too.

Carefull guys, some have reported fungus growth in the lungs after having used spalted wood. And i can easily belive it.

[sgschwend]

Keeping them short will help.

Since you are in an experimental mode, how about a kerf running down the log to provide access for the growth?

[T Welsh]

sg, I was being lazy by putting the logs in the back, had a shed roof fall in from snow load last winter, and had to move them out of the way to demolish and load into dumpster with skid steer and grapple. noticed them the other day and had camera with me so I took a picture,the beech and maple look promising , the sweet gum I have my doubts, used one of them to true the mill up after I hit the mast with a log. after it started drying the boards looked like bacon in a frying pan. I will get these logs moved and cut up within the month and let you guys know how they turn out. I have logs older than these in the work piles and have never seen them start to rot this fast. I think it has to do with high moisture content and being under a canopy of 75' white pines. they even have green mold on the north side. Tim

[Tree Feller]

I prefer spalting the entire log to individual boards. That way the boards can be bookmatched when cut. It makes great door panels that way. It is more difficult to control the process but the results are worth the hit-or-miss method.

The fungi that cause spalting are everywhere. We breathe them in with every breath so it's not necessary to do anything to the log except provide the optimum conditions which is shade and 70 to 90 degrees temperature. The required moisture is already present in the log. Using beer as a "starter" is not necessary or even beneficial. Besides, it's a waste of good beer.   ;D

Hackberry spalts pretty readily but there's not a lot of time between optimally spalted and too punky to use. It bears watching closely and a "test" log cut at the same time is a good idea. Slice off cookies from the test log periodically to see how much the spalting has progressed.

Sweetgum is another wood that spalts pretty quickly and I've found that it actually makes it more stable. It will still move a lot but not as much as unspalted lumber.

There's a young lady in Canada, Sara Robinson who is a woodturner and an expert on spalted wood...she actually has a PhD on the subject. She writes a blog for Fine Woodworking Magazine that has a lot of good info on spalting. She also has a web site dedicated to the topic...  --Photos MUST be in the Forestry Forum gallery!--/kaysa_gabriel//Northern_Spalting/Northern_Spalting.html

If you are interested in spalted wood, it's a worthwhile read.

[T Welsh]

Tree Feller, I,m with you on this one. I do prefer the whole log to be spalted. from what I have seen over the years it depends on the type of wood and how long the degradation process has been going on, leave it to long and you get mostly rot, not long enough and the spalting only goes in past the sap wood. my all time best wood has been hard maple at the bottom of the work piles always in the number#2 or firewood pile. I don,t get to clean them up only but once a year or so, the number#1 pile gets sold or sawn in less than a month. Tim

[T Welsh]

Had a call for a beech log from a guy that wanted to quatersaw in to saw handles! I do not have any in the yard at present, but I knew I had one somewhere >:( I found it at home in my experiment spalting log pile. I cut a cookie off it and here is what I found

  

   They look about done!!! I need to load these up and saw them! Tim

[Tree Feller]

Looks like there will be some spectacular spalting in that Beech log, going by what I see on the end. Be sure and post some board pics when you saw it.

[John_Haylow]

I'm anxious to see how this turns out Tim...good luck.
John

[Jim_Rogers]

The guy from Maine who used to buy Maple from me would tell me that he would cover the 10" long logs with leaves to make them splater. (is the the correct spelling of spalter?)
He would come here and I'd cut my long maple logs into 10" discs and he'd load them into his pick up truck and haul them back to Bangor Maine.
And during the winter months he'd turn little wooden things all winter long and sell that at traveling craft shows all summer long.

[Jeff]

(is the the correct spelling of spalter?)

I'm not positive, but I believe the verb is spalt, as in to spalt, and the spalted is an adjective, as in a spalted beech log.

[beenthere]

Maybe just a typo in the subject line.  ;)

[Left Coast Chris]

I have a Silver Maple log I let stay out all winter.  Sounds like it is time to check it.   One caution Ive had is really watch out for breathing the sawdust.  Ive had two really nasty sinus infections from it when turning bowls in the winter.   Wearing a dust mask last time seemed to remedy the problem. :

[redbeard]

I have my experiments going too. 10' logs are good lengths the hard part is knowing when spalt is all the way through the log. Its nice having 10' long boards with consistant spalt.

[T Welsh]

I,ll get a better picture of the end grain for you guy,s The wood is still sound and the fungus has passed all the way through the log. I think this is the 3rd summer for these logs. Tim

[Jim_Rogers]

I was remarking once to a doctor who was here buying some lumber about seeing cutting boards made out of spalted wood.

I was concerned about the fungus that creates the spalt being in the wood of the cutting board as it was used for food preparation. And that the spalted wood would be bad for a cutting board. And that I was cautioned before about wearing a dust mask when milling a spalted log to prevent the fungus dust from being inhaled.

He explained to me that there is a vast difference in breathing in spalted dust and ingesting spalted wood dust. According to him your stomach acids would kill the fungus from a cutting board wood. And breathing in spalted wood fungus dust could be bad for your lungs.
I personally would not like to see a spalted wood cutting board being used.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid but that's me.

Jim Rogers

[Tree Feller]

Jim,

According to the lady I referenced in a previous post in this thread, working with spalted wood is no more hazardous than working with any other wood. A dust mask is recommended for either as wood dust is a carcinogen. Spalted wood might affect someone whose auto-immune system was compromised but not an otherwise healthy person.

If you walk in the woods, you are breathing the same fungal spores that cause spalting. If you are stirring up dead leaves, you are breathing lots of them. In fact, they are just about everywhere in the air.

Bacteria in a cutting board is much more dangerous than fungal spores. That's why plastic cutting boards aren't good. The cuts in the plastic harbor bacteria.

[shelbycharger400]

i had a red oak log here for about 2 or 3 years looked ugly on the outside.  cut it on the mill,  no spalt at all, i was able to save some material  wetter than wet inside.

[Jeff]

I think oak is pretty tough to spalt. In fact, I can't recall in all my years at the mill ever seeing spalted oak, and if I did, it wasn't anything that looked like what you get with lighter colored woods like maple and beech.

[T Welsh]

Like Jeff said, Only certain types of wood will spalt, All are light woods? I have seen oak spalt but the fibers in the wood are so far deteriorated they are useless to work with.Splating comes from a fungus! Would you inhale ground up fungus The guy that wanted the Beech log for saw handles just e-mailed me and gave me the go ahead to saw this log for him, So that means we all get to find out what this stuff looks like after 3 years in shade and damp conditions. I told him I will get these to the mill and he can pick from 3 logs which one he wants. The rest of the logs are red oak and sweet gum. I will get pictures as I go. Tim

[Sawmill Man]

The sapwood of most oaks will spalt, the logs just have to be big enough to saw lumber out of the sapwood.

[shelbycharger400]

every once in a while i find oak slivers around here that are a dark green, never anything big enough though :(  i did have some bigger, but it was so dirt infested/ and cracked to beat that it wouldnt make anything good so it  went into the wood splitter.