Spalted Liquid Amber

[John K Jordan]

My friend David Smith from the Northwest sent me a piece of wood the other day labeled Liquid Amber. It was soft and punky and the tearout was horrible but promised some striking figure.

Dave wrote: "I knew the liquid amber was really soft and was hoping you could do something with it. My mom's neighbor in California had this rotting tree stump and said I could have it. Most of it was rotted away but I just had to take a small piece."

So I could turn it without it falling apart I used the old stabilization standby, CA glue. (*) The biggest challenge for this little piece was deciding how to turn it to best show off the wonderful spalting.



Oh, this is 2" tall, sitting on a piece of ebony.

I never heard of Liquid Amber so I looked it up. It sure has a lot interesting names for what turns out to be a common tree...
Liquidambar styraciflua, commonly called American sweetgum, hazel pine, American-storax, bilsted, red-gum, satin-walnut, star-leaved gum, or alligator-wood.

* If you haven't tried using CA to stabilize wood, I do this: turn to rough shape, flood with thin CA glue until it won't soak up any more, let it set up, then add more if it will take it. I do not use accelerator. (I prefer HotStuff brand CA for this. Be cautious of the fumes and be aware that it will probably get HOT and smoke. I've never had one catch fire.) Turn a little down to clean wood, then repeat the glue application, make a finish cut, repeat. Shear scraping with a spindle gouge will take off excess hardened glue on the surface. Sand and finish. This method can "turn" an otherwise misbehaving piece of wood into one with a glass-smooth surface. I last used it with good results on some mostly decayed spalted yellow poplar.

BTW, just for fun I tried something different, a photo I haven't tried before with a shape like this. To keep it from rolling in the photo booth I put a little wedge behind it cut from a gum eraser. Tip: tilt your photo surface ever so slightly up in the front so placement aids like the wedge can be easily hidden BEHIND the piece. This is a lot simpler than messing with tape or plastitack...

LiquidAmber_IMG_5849.jpg

This is my diffusing photo cube, putting the table saw to good use. Easy to make.

photo_cube.jpg

JKJ

[daryl moses]

Beautiful piece and I love the shape, great form!!
We have plenty of Sweet Gum here on the farm and I've turned my fair share of it but never had a piece with that much character. Maybe I need to cut one down and let ole Mother Nature do her thing.
BTW, it sure looks larger than 2"!

[Bob Bouis]

Very interesting wood. It really doesn't look like sweetgum to me, but I guess it could have just been unrecognizable because of the degree of decay. Maybe. Sweetgum is also not a native California tree--not saying it's impossible that there was one growing there, though.

Sweetgum is very perishable around here and any piece that was spalted would also be swiss cheese, in my experience at least. It makes very handsome, streaky bowls, at least if there's enough heartwood which there sometimes isn't.

The trees are very common around here and when undisturbed grow spectacularly large. Old growth sweetgum dominated swampy areas, along with sycamore (another tree that can get really huge). There are still a few of them at a park here that are really a sight to behold.

[Bob Bouis]

I don't have a photo booth so my pictures aren't so good, but here's one:

sweetgum.jpg

[Jay Mullins]

Nice work John, I have found that shellac works very well when turning spalted wood that has become very punky. I turn to the shape I want then saturate with the shellac. The next day I will lightly sand and repeat the process. Most spalted wood is too beautiful to just throw away, so I save it when I can.

Jay

[John K Jordan]

Nice work John, I have found that shellac works very well when turning spalted wood that has become very punky. I turn to the shape I want then saturate with the shellac. The next day I will lightly sand and repeat the process. Most spalted wood is too beautiful to just throw away, so I save it when I can.

Jay, thanks. I use the shellac too (thinned) or use thinned lacquer for soft wood and especially spalted wood. (The lacquer dries quicker but I like the shellac better as an undercoat.) I've been collecting quite a bit of spalted wood, maple, birch, beech, hackberry, tamerind, yellow poplar. Someone gave me a bunch of green holly this year and I let some spalt - wierd! And with a similar story to Dave's, from a stump I hauled off for a neighbor I got some amazing spalted Dogwood! I've cut a lot of dogwood and had some on the ground and almost rotted, but I have never once seen any spalting. I know this stump was sitting exposed in their yard for over 5 years - maybe that's a good trick for fantastic spalting.

This piece had parts that were almost crumbly in places so I went for the CA. I find it makes the wood almost as hard as wood that has been stabilized with resin infusion.

Bob, I don't know anything else about the wood. I have cut a number of sweetgum logs on my sawmill and have blanks on my shelf, but from the looks of the part of it I didn't turn I can believe it could be sweetgum. Perhaps the owner of the stump was a forester who planted the tree 40 years ago, or maybe liquid amber is a guess. Maybe I'll see if there is enough wood structure left in the tenon to do an end-grain examination with the microscope. But regardless, the character in the wood got me highly interested!

Daryl, Thanks. About the size, that's exactly what my wife said! She said it was a lot smaller than she expected after seeing the picture. (I have to be careful handing her the actual pieces since sometimes they are confiscated and sent off to her friends for birthday presents and such.)

I think part of the size perception may be a photo trick. Besides the perspective difference from using a long lens, photos of small things are photographed with a macro lens usually have a tell-tale narrow depth of focus. I used a very small aperture and long shutter speed to give this one a deeper focus.

For something completely different, here is one of my favorite macro shots from a few years ago, shooting my honeybees in a golden rain tree - the depth of field is tiny!

bee_golden_rain_2.jpg

At least the wood stayed perfectly still. In the bee shoot the things moving were the bees, the branches, the camera, and myself! Sharp focus was tricky. I took over 400 photos over two days to get 6 in good focus and composition. Good clean fun!

JKJ

[Bob Bouis]

I like sweetgums, but most people consider them a nuisance tree. They grow tall and straight, which doesn't look too good in a yard. They make poor firewood and drop lots of spikey balls. Plus they like wet soil so I assume they'd have a hard time growing in California. But who knows. I'd be interested to hear of the results of your microscope analysis.

[Doug Rasmussen]

Aw jeez..we just had to take a very large sweet gum down on our parking strip.

We had such a hate relationship with that tree it never occurred to me to save any for turning. We planted the tree years ago when it was listed as a recommended "street" tree. It was later removed from the recommended list because as they age they tend to drop huge limbs with no warnings of apparent structural issues with the limb. Seattle has what seems like odd rules for trees on your parking strip. You pay for the tree, but the city has control over the trees. You pay to maintain them using only a city approved tree service to trim them under city issued permit. You can not have a street tree removed without permit and authorization from the city arborist.

[John K Jordan]

Seattle has what seems like odd rules for trees on your parking strip.

I don't know exactly what a parking strip is, but you just reminded me of why I moved to the countryside! We don't even need a permit to put up a building (if it's related to agriculture.)

I found that some sweetgum trees had a rainbow of color inside - pink, blue/green, creamy white, and browns. The best colors I found were subdued but still worth turning. Surprises like that at the sawmill are great fun!

JKJ

[Damon McLaughlin]

John, I'm glad you found a good use for the liquid amber that I sent you. And I sincerely appreciate the your gift of wood too!!

When I was visiting my mother last summer in Ft. Bragg California I met a friend of hers. She said that she had a tree fall down about ten years ago and a local woodworker took everything except the stump. She says the woodworker is the one that said the tree was liquid amber so that is all I have to go on. Anyway, the stump laid there for almost a decade and I was told I could have it. Most of it was so rotten that it fell apart before I could even roll it to the truck. And it was a horrible mess with my step dad's chain saw. Eventually I got to some not so rotten wood (though still very punky) and brought it home. Its been sitting in the garden shed for about eight months now. I love the color and figures in the wood and slowly I've been chipping away at the clods of dirt and rocks. I'm still afraid to start turning it yet, I'm waiting to build up my skills first. Its wonderful to see what John was able to do with a piece of it.

[John K Jordan]

With a razor blade I was able to get a clean cross section of the end grain of the small piece left over. At first look it appears to be consistent with sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua). Maybe I'll have time tomorrow to use the stereo microscope and check it against the references.

Spent the day with two vet students dissecting a seriously injured peacock. Scalpels, hemostats, forceps, scissors, microscope slides. The interesting activities available on a farm... (And another good use for the shop!)

JKJ

[John K Jordan]

With a razor blade I was able to get a clean cross section of the end grain of the small piece left over. At first look it appears to be consistent with sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua). Maybe I'll have time tomorrow to use the stereo microscope and check it against the references.

Well, no luck. The section that looked clean was nearly useless under magnification. The cell walls were "mushy" and collapsed instead of cutting with a sharp razor blade. I could see that it was very finely diffuse porous with barely visible ring boundaries and rays but the whole sample is so indistinct I can't tell. Hoadley cautions that several species are so close to gum that it takes a high magnification to tell for sure, and that is on a good sample. I'm going to give up on the ID and just be happy to have finished it!

JKJ

[Jay Mullins]

sounds like toooooooooooo much government control for me. I used to live in fla. and the code enforcement people were always driving up and down the street looking for violations to write up. Don't miss that at all. In NC , if I want to cut a tree on my property, I don't have to ask anybody.

Jay

[Frederick Skelly]

Gorgeous John!

[CHARLES D Richards]

John,
here's a photo of a rough turned spalted sweet gum that I finished turning this week. It's a little punky and in the finishing room now so I don't have current photos as yet. It took about 9 months for it spalt.IMG_20161222_165118__1484728160_10057.jpg