Spalting Lumber

[aigheadish]

How long ago was it when the "character" wood was being thrown away or burned or whatever? It seems like the live edge trend has been happening for a while now and the same with the epoxy trend. It's hard telling (to me anyway) when a trend is no longer a trend and is all part of the deal. Sounds like a great option to sell wood that would have gone in the burn pile. 

[moodnacreek]

My comments are based on long experience of sawing, stacking and selling in my little world. It has not been a hobby for a long time. If some one is getting married or something and wants 'cookies' and I see a cedar log that is bad I will grab a chainsaw and do that and give them away just to get back to work. Saw logs rot and I always have them. They must be cut and dried, yesterday. I created a monster and letting dreamers hang around does not work when the gen set is burning diesel at todays prices. In spite of my bad attitude there are enough customers who put up with me and many have become friends.

[Walnut Beast]

It's plain and simple. Look at crafted pieces of character wood and then plain wood. There is no comparison where people gravitate to. With all the different epoxy's and color pigments there is some incredible stuff out there and thousands of dollars people pay for it. People been saying the slab trend was a fad. That was years ago. It's still going 

[YellowHammer]

When the generator is burning fuel there ain't no yakking, it's all doing, 100% with you on that!  Especially these days.

I guess what I'm saying is if there is a way to cater to both types of customers, with both types of wood, and not waste time doing it, then that is a good thing.

I personally don't think live edge or spalted wood is just a fad, I thinks it's just a different style of wood for a different style of customer.  

No different than some people want top of the line factory vehicles off the showroom floor and other people want highly customized street rods or antique cars. 

[Larry]

I bought a whack of mostly low grade but larger walnut logs last month.  The first thing I did was to make a log sort.  Most of the logs with two faces went to 8/4 grade lumber.  Since the logs were bigger the rest went to 10/4 live edge. 

I was a little disappointed at my grade yield on the 8/4 but its usual for thicker stuff.  I imagine most of it will go into chairs and benches.

Live edge will mostly go for tables.

One fatal flaw in my scheme.  After kiln dry it will again be sorted......and I keep the very best for myself!

Larry, the wood hoarder.

[mudfarmer]

A wise man told us one day that -we are not our ideal customer- (poorly paraphrased) I think some others are saying similar here. Thinking on it we had some excellent clarity regarding things we thought would work well but didn't and vice versa.

Always love to see quality outlets for ""low grade"" logs, it is often the only incentive that gets them cut and out of the woods to grow ""better"" trees 

[moodnacreek]

Members; Please understand that I don't condemn whatever others do with wood for fun or profit. People think logs have to be dried and have branches attached to make crafty things I wish they had never seen. When I tell them I don't have time to saw it they want me to by it!  I get no satisfaction from constantly telling people no. It is frustrating. To turn the cheek and do it anyhow just brings more. Actions speak louder than words.

[customsawyer]

It doesn't just apply to when the generator is running. I have made customers wait several times when I'm running the planers. I don't know this for a fact but have always heard that it cost more to start up my electric motors then for them to run for 15 mins. Normally I can finish the pack I'm working on in that 15 mins.

[JoshNZ]

No way can that be true lol I heard that about fluorescent lights (and I don't think that's true either) but not motors. The math doesn't add up

[customsawyer]

I know the amp draw is a lot higher at start up then when running. 

[aigheadish]

It does make sense that start up is rougher than running. It's a lot easier to push a car that's already moving than one that is stopped. I assume the same is similar for big cutting blades or spinning things. Basically (and I don't really know anything) the power has to overcome the torque needed to move something, then it just maintains. Similar to a car running on flat ground at 60 mph uses much less fuel than starts and stops through town.

[btulloh]

There is a startup surge when power is applied to a motor. Part of that is overcoming inertia and a large part is a result of applying power to an inductive load. There is a brief requirement for almost twice the running current, but it's very short and doesn't add up to the 15 minute thing. The 15 minute rule has been around for a long time, especially for fluorescent lights, but it's bogus. Sort of an urban myth really.  On the other hand, there are lots of other good reason for Jake to finish what he's doing before dealing with interruptions. 

BTW, there are special breakers (slow-blow) for motor circuits. Aigheadish probably doesn't really need one of those slow-blow breakers though. He may need to replace his breaker if it has been tripped a lot. Breakers get tired.  Just following the basic requirements for supplying power to a load will take care of the problem and make the welder happy.  Sounds like he's got some family members who can advise him on that. 

[YellowHammer]

Sometimes I need a slow blow fuse when the generator is drinking 10 gallons an hour and the customer wants to revisit how thick he really wants the wood.  

[moodnacreek]

If you are buying 3 phase around here it costs more to start than run. Single phase, if you can use it, is cheaper because no demand charge. Because of this you have to generate your own 3 phase power in most cases as the motor starting is just another pint of diesel.

[JoshNZ]

That just can't be true. Based on our numbers here in NZ it costs about 16cents to run a 400V motor at say 4A with a power factor of .8 for 15 minutes.

If your motor took 1s to wind up it would have to draw over 4000A average for the second, to cost the same. You'd have bigger problems than your electricity bill if there were anything to the 15 minute vs starting myth

[customsawyer]

Like I said I don't know as I'm not a electrician. Btulloh was kind enough to point out that it was just a myth. Which I greatly appreciate. Now I won't cringe every time I push a start button. I know that both of my bigger planers won't let the feed motor start until the top head has reached full speed. On the Pinhero it has what is called Star Delta motors which make them different in some way (read first sentence) and are not very common in my neck of the woods.  What I do know is after you pay a large chunk of change for the equipment, getting 3ph power, 2 drop down transformers, blower system, and duct work I don't enjoy turning it off every time someone wants to know if I have any scrapes for free.

[Machinebuilder]

the Star/delta motor is used to reduce the starting current.

in 3 phase a star (wye) connection starts the motor and after a set amount of time it will switch to a Delta connection.

It's a less expensive way to have a soft start.

I've only seen it on bigger (35hp and up) motors. An easy way to tell if the motor can be used like this is look in the Connection box and there will be 12 wires (for a 230/460V Motor). The control cabinet will have a couple additional contactors used to do the switching.

[Larry]

Back to spalting.

I have a good friend that works in my shop a couple days a week turning on the wood lathe.  She specializes in spalted, knotty, and generally junk wood.  I put aside interesting wood to spalt.  The trouble we have is the wood does not spalt completely or it goes past the spalt stage into the rot stage where its worthless to turn.  Wasted time and material.

This is some soft maple I set aside in the garage last fall to splalt.  The lines are ok but its a little past the spalt stage into the rot stage.  Made it near impossible to get super clean cuts with the bowl gouge so she will have to do lots of sanding.  These two have been soaked with sanding sealer to stiffen the fibers so they can be sanded cleanly.







A little science into spalting wood would be a huge benefit.  May have to get an appointment with Dr Spalt. 

MS, hows the experiment progressing? 
 

[metalspinner]

Larry, the last time I checked, all the surfaces were covered with mycelium and the boards were all stuck together. So, it's going ok, I guess?? :D
I'm in Texas this week but am anxious to check when I get home. 

[JoshNZ]

We must be due for an update on this 

[metalspinner]

Josh,
Nick was back in town this past weekend and we took a peek inside. 
Every board is stuck together with mycelium and we needed a spring bar to pop a few apart. 
But what we could see didn't look like much yet. I think the cold wood/weather early on got us off on a slow start. 

I'll get a few pics of the small
Containers when the sun comes up. 

Let's see what it looks like by Labor Day. (Early September)

[metalspinner]

Oh, yeah, I kind of forgot about this project! 
But yesterday I went in to take a peek. 
Here's a look at two of the totes...



 



 



 

I'll bring a couple of these to
The shop today to run through the planer for a better look. 

[Walnut Beast]

Very cool !! Looking forward to it 👍

[boardmaker]

Any updates?
Wondering how the pieces you ran through the planer turned out?

[metalspinner]

Wifey wants her garage space back to store Christmas decorations. So, the experiment must come
To an end. 
Nick was in town for the holidays and we went about disassembling this pile. A few pics are attached here in the post with a pic of each layer in my gallery. 

We just dead stacked everything in the driveway and I'll deal with it later. 
But here are the results.  I was first surprised how much the lumber dried out. These were green sycamore and beech so they were very heavy to start. But coming out, they were fairly easy to handle alone. 
Second, every board was locked together. I used a shovel to slip between pieces to pry them apart. 
Third, lots of growth! Don't know if it's what I was wanting to grow, but there was lots of it!

I did scrape away some surfaces to see what was on/in the board. Some areas were still clean wood, others had spalt. That's ok, I guess. But will know more when I have a chance to run a few through the planer. 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 

And the space bleached clean with shelving ready for Christmas decorations.