What's this about "forced spalting"??? Please fill a newbie in.

Tom Nie

Tom, get a cup of coffee. This explanation turned out longer than I
intended...

This is something I picked up on this very group a few years ago. Your
mileage will vary, but this is my take on the procedure after a few
years of experimenting:

You need to start out with green (really green) wood. Rough out your
desired piece to close to finished dimension. Take a plastic grocery
store bag or something similar, and put a thick layer (2 -3") at the
bottom. Put the piece in, and pack it tight with the green shavings,
bark and all. Tie off the bag with a loose knot, and turn it upside
down and put it in another grocery bag. This way it is pretty well
sealed with the knots on either side of the piece.

I put this under my shop, where it is warm but out of direct sunlight.
Check on this piece in about a month. It should be starting to turn
black and maybe even smell a little swampy. I take out about half the
shavings, then seal it up and wait another month. When I check it the
second time, I take out half the remaining shavings and seal it back up
in the bags.

One month later, I take a look at it. If it is going to crack or split
like a bowl, center piece, vase, etc., it will usually be doing it now.
Surprisingly, gel CA will work wonders on this wood at this point,
even though it is moist and nasty, so that is my chosen crack defense.
I then put it back in the plastic bag with no shavings and let it
finish drying out, usually another month and it is perfect.

You will be surprised how much of the black spalting and mold color
will turn off in some pieces and how much won't from others. I get
strange colors (the ash pencil holder I just finished had a large
emerald green streak in it that finshed beatifully) and different
patterns that show up you never would have seen. That same piece of
ash now looks like some tropical wood, nicely brown toned (ash is light
tan to white) over the whole piece, quite exotic. But I have done
other pieces of ash that just look like dirty old wood when finished.
Those pieces go to the ebonizing lab.

I have plenty of ash around here, plenty of hackberry, and pecan to
practice on. Each piece will turn out different, and even different
shapes that dry differently will look completely different from another
finished piece off the same branch (literally).

Like I said, you never know what you will get. One larger centerpiece
I roughed out turned completely black. Like the bottom of a boot. I
let it finsh drying though, and then finished it out. It honestly
looked like a piece of nice walnut after sanding and the final finish
on it. So experimentation is the key. One good bonus to this method
is that you rarely have any piece warp badly due to the fact you have
slowed the drying to a crawl. Also, you can also stop the spalting
along the way in this process and double bag the piece to let it finish
drying.

When I trim my trees, or when my neighbors trim theirs, I usually have
log or two of green stuff to begin the process. Turning green is fun
and fast... so I have a lot of pieces in different stages under the
shop at any given time.

I have had no luck with anything in the oak family, nor mesquite. I
would think that the best woods would be those medium hardwoods that
are of lighter color so that you can see the effects of the process.

I hope you try this out as I have sure had a lot of fun with it.

Robert