"Kevin" wrote in message
...
I have almost run out of my current stock of Maple. However a neighbor
bequeathed to me a rather large chunk of the same wood. The size is about
24" diam. & 40" high. I did notice that it had a goodly amount of various
mushrooms and fungi growing on it. Now I understand that this may well
indicate a really winderful level of spalting on the inside. OTOH, it may
indicate I have a large chunk of punky wood; the type that is subject to
horrendous tearout and soft as heck. If the latter, what would you folks
do
with it, other than build a nice sized fire and cook sweet potatoes in the
coals? Is there any means of saving or using it?


Fortunately, when it's so punky that it crumbles where you try to hold or
cut it, it's also incredibly ugly. Those soft spots will never pick up a
good finish, won't look like much even if you deliberately try to out-soak
'em. I no longer feel a sense of loss when I stick a digit into the
surface of a punky area. I save the sound parts or pitch the whole thing.

What will drive you to distraction and possibly hurt you are the radial
checks which may have formed and closed. These show outlines like hairpins
on the end grain, seem to pull apart at random regardless of gluing effort,
and pose a disintegration danger to the turner.

If you can get a cut on a _wet_ surface which has only some peck-out, you'll
be able to do a good dry cut. If you get crumble, or those radial checks
open up after gluing, give it to the stove and move on. There's lots of
other wood to turn.