Anyone have any idea how long you have to leave a maple log lay before it turns into spaulded maple. I have a turkey mounted and I made a octogan show case for it out of spauled sycamore it is hard to beat for beauty.

Spaulted maple that is hard,i.e. that could be used for a stock,already needs to be in the tree before it's felled.

The spaulting that can occur on the ground,renders most pieces soft.Punky and rotten.

What you are looking for often occurs in trees that are damaged when alive.Minerals collect in the grain structure,causing the black lines to appear.

If you do have a tree with good spaulting,a board needs 5 years of TLC to be started into a blank.

Thats why you see stock makers gather the inventory they do....

The wood needs to equalize to the moisture thats present daily in the air.And,the stress in the wood needs to be allieved.The reason you see stock blanks for sale already cut down to a specific gun looking shape.

Dan

"Spalted" wood is the result of a fungal infection, which can be artificially given to a tree. There is no guarantee that spalted wood will result however, the tree may successfully fight off the infection, or it may just die. If your tree is already dead then you just get rot.

billm,

I looked up "spalting" on wikipedia and got a great definition. Looks like it's more varied than I had thought.

The closest I can come to helping you on time is to reference some sycamore that we cut and had quartersawn. I'm looking at a table top made of it as I type.

Tree was broken in a storm in September. We cut the standing butt of the tree the following Feb. We had it milled the following June. When we made the first cut I was excited! Nice black fungus in the grain. I hadn't expected that.

As for downed logs, I've talked to sawyers who have put logs through a process to stimulate spalting but I don't remember the details.

lc

I have heard of woodworkers using indelible ink and a very thin quill artists pen with nib like a fountain pen, doing it freehand. Tedious work. Practice on scrap to develop your technique.