Spalting
Natures spectacular imperfections
As if wood didn’t have enough going for it already with ever- changing grain patterns, wavy compression figure, and feather-like crotch figure, just to name a few. As woodworkers, one of our passions is finding the beauty in nature and showcasing it, and possibly one of the most spectacular occurrences mother nature has to offer is called spalting.
So what is this thing that get us woodworkers all giddy when we see it? simply put, it’s a fungal infection. Fungi enter a log and take up residence doing what living organisms do best: consuming, spreading, and slowly rotting the tree from the inside and killing it if the tree is unlucky enough to be exposed while it is alive. As with anything related to trees and the wood we get from them, this process can take years to manifest and rot the tree.
This wood is in the early stages of spalting with only a few zone lines and no visible rot.
Spalting can be as simple as just a few squiggly black lines that seem to start and stop as if someone ran a marker across the board or as intricate as meandering black squiggles and color variations that flow through the grain almost as if you’re looking at a Jackson Pollock painting.
A very heavily spalted slab that I milled from a live maple tree that was taken down. This is some of the most amazing wood that I have found to date. Being so spalted, this wood has many punky areas and if used for something that needs structure it will need to be stabilized with resin.
Spalting can be found in many species of wood, but seems to be more common, or at least more noticeable, in lighter colored hardwoods like maple and beech. the fungi is completely harmless to humans, and once the wood is taken from the fungi’s damp warm environment and dried, the spalting process is halted and won’t progress any further.
Spotting spalted wood is pretty simple once you understand what you’re looking for. A log that looks like it’s been sitting on the ground in a shady damp area for a while is likely to have some spalting. To know for sure, all that you’ll need to do is take a slice off of one of the ends of the log to get it away from the the wood that has been exposed to the dirt and grime from the environment. Once your cut is made and you’re back to “fresher” wood, you simply look for the tell- tale black lines that should be visible swirling around in the end grain.
You can see by the outside of this log that is had been dead for a while and is a good candidate for spalting. You can also see from the fresh cut end that there’s definatly something fun going on in there.
This is the inside of the piece of wood from the previous picture. With a little imagination this wood can give a piece furniture or wood art some amazing natural contrast and texture.
As stated earlier, spalting can occur in live trees as well as dead, but knowing if a live tree has this fungal infection is much trickier. A tree that looks like it’s struggling to survive is a good candidate, especially if the tree has a lot of branches that have died and broken off, large injuries like splitting in crotch sections, and loose and missing sections of bark. However, the only sure way to know is to cut into the tree. Unless the tree is going to be cut down before it falls down, you’ll just have to keep imagining.
Many woodworkers, myself included, will use punky spalted wood, looking to find that balance between the striking visuals and texture of decay and an elegant design. Rotted/punky wood can be used right up to the point where it crumbles in your hand with processes like infusing the wood with resin. Some of the most decayed wood can be given the strength it needs to become a showcase worthy piece able to withstand everyday use with this little trick; this allows artists to show the true beauty of mother nature.
The advanced spalting makes this piece visually stunning, but makes working it a little nerve-wracking due to the punky soft grain. I like the texture from the tear-out you get when tooling the soft grain, especially when it naturally flows into spots of unrotted wood, like in the right hand corner of this bowl.
Working wood this far along in the rotting process is very risky because of the lack of structure in the wood fibers. With a little care and patience, an amazing piece of art can be pulled from something that most would consider firewood.