I picked up some pine and wondered - does pine spalt? Some time back I had
some hard maple and some ash that developed some lovely spalting. Will pine
do the same? Currently it is outside and not ON the ground but setting on
some other wood.

"kwilhite" wrote in message
...
I picked up some pine and wondered - does pine spalt? Some time back I had
some hard maple and some ash that developed some lovely spalting. Will
pine
do the same? Currently it is outside and not ON the ground but setting on
some other wood.



My limited experience with pine is that it will likely develop black stains
from water, mold and possibly some bugs. I don't find the black to be
attractive. Because it is softwood, I think it may be more prone to going
punky without the nice spalting. Interested to hear other comments.
Billh

"kwilhite" wrote in message
...
I picked up some pine and wondered - does pine spalt? Some time back I had
some hard maple and some ash that developed some lovely spalting. Will
pine
do the same? Currently it is outside and not ON the ground but setting on
some other wood.



Sapwood will develop "bluestain" from a fungus. Interior may pick it up
after a while, but the amount of resin in the way, and the loss of moisture
usually confine it to sapwood.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/techline/ii-2.pdf

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 11:45:42 -0500, "kwilhite"
wrote:

I picked up some pine and wondered - does pine spalt? Some time back I had
some hard maple and some ash that developed some lovely spalting. Will pine
do the same? Currently it is outside and not ON the ground but setting on
some other wood.

I had a hunk of pine sitting in the garage that I turned a bowl out
of, and it had a little spalting. It was sort of a sky-blue, instead
of the black I see on the maple I've found, but it was certainly
there. Of course, then I covered up all the blue by taking the
propane torch to the thing. Kinda made it look like a Zebra- I
figured I'd try it out, since picking up the pine was a mistake in the
first place. The wife liked the effect an awful lot- but I'm still no
fan of pine.

I turn a fair bit of Norfolk Pine (which does not have as much resin as some
other pines) here in Hawaii, and it indeed does spalt nicely. The key is
keeping it wet enough until spalting goes to the state you want. If the
moisture drops too much, the spalting will stop.

Most of the Norfolk Pine bowls sold here in Hawaii are spalted, some of them so
heavily you can't see any light colored wood any more!

Good Luck!
--Rick

kwilhite wrote:

I picked up some pine and wondered - does pine spalt? Some time back I had
some hard maple and some ash that developed some lovely spalting. Will pine
do the same? Currently it is outside and not ON the ground but setting on
some other wood.