Anchorseal and spalted maple

[philip labre]

I was out in the woods yesterday and came upon a spot where I can harvest TONS of spalted hard maple. Some butts are 3' in diameter and some crotches are 4' in diameter so I will need to break it down to carry them. I was thinking about breaking them down to square blanks out there rather than having the mess in the yard later, when I want to use it. Question is, would I need to seal the whole blank or can I just get away with sealing the end grain? It's been down for a few years.
We couldn't resist taking home something, so here is some curly we got by cutting off half of a stump. When the roads dry up I'll go get the rest and more.
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[Bruce Smith]

I have worked with a fair amout of different kinds of spalted wood and have had good luck at sealing the end grain only. Then again if the timber has been down a fair amount of time it may be a different story, you just may find that some of it may be a little puunky and only good for fire wood with a loss of BTU's, but we shall wish for you that it will be good turning wood. Cheers and please let us know how you make out.

[Cody Colston]

Sealing the entire blank will cause it to retain moisture longer which will prolong the spalting. If you want the spalting to stop, the blank needs to dry below 20% MC.

If it's already sufficiently spalted, seal the end-grain only.

[David E Keller]

I know you didn't post this as a gloat, but I still have to say, "you suck!"

That's awesome looking wood, and if it's still solid, you've found a treasure chest. Given the ice and snow on the wood, I don't think there's much spalting going on right now. Once the wood warms up, that fungus will kick into action again as Cody suggested. I'll bet you are fine with just sealing end grain until you can get it roughed out.

Great looking wood!

[Steve Schlumpf]

Phil - Great Gloat!! Beautiful wood! I would think that just sealing the endgrain would work for the short term - just keep an eye on it!

Looking forward to seeing what you turn out of it!

[Eugene Wigley]

Philip, that is great looking wood. I wish I could find wood like that in Eastern NC. Thanks for posting this.

[Darren Jamieson]

If you haven't worked with old spalted maple then you are going to love it. The stuff that I have been working on for the last two years came from a 4' maple that was actually down for probably 3years before I got to it and it is another two years older now. The wood looks like it is real bad but as I just found out once you get into it, it cut's just fine. It was never, right to today sealed at all. Not that that is the right way to do it but I haven't noticed any extra spalt since it got home and there has only been very marginal checking in the ends. So either way you'll probably be OK

[Jeff Nicol]

It looks like you have found it at great state of spalting and it looks like it goes through all the wood. The spalting really is done as far as I have seen over the years once it is throughout the wood, it depends on when it was cut and how much moisture and the amount of the white and black fungus that grow together to create the spalting. If only one is present the wood will not spalt but begin to rot and the same will happen after the spalting is done the wood gets punky and deteriorates. The more sap that is in the tree when it is cut down the faster it will spalt and mold as we all know there is sugar in maple sap.

So seal the end grain of the blanks and any larger chunks you get later before you get to cutting them into smaller blanks. It you don't seal it or bag it after you cut it into blanks it will check over night and maybe crack a lot if the wood is highly figured or has knots etc in it.

Great find,

Jeff