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What does spalting look like?

R

Ron Kaplan

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Mar 3, 2010
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Location
San Marcos, CA (North San Diego)
Being a southern California wood turner, I basically live in a desert. As such, we don't have a lot of cool moist environments around here. I have seen spalted wood in block form where the beautiful lines are very visible. However I can't say I have seen a log sitting on the side of a trail that was spalted. How do you know what is inside of a log, short of mushrooms growing out the sides? Does anyone have photos of spalted logs they can share with us moisture deprived woodturners?

Thanks,
Ron
 
The end of the log will show evidence of spalting. Take a clean pass with a plane or carving tool - after scrubbing the dirt away - and you can get some idea as to the extent and position of the spalt. Since water wants to stay low, a log lying on the ground will often be spalted only below center. This progresses upward if the conditions remain right, but the bottom is often too soft by the time it's showing up top. I like to rotate logs to get spalting round and round. Others like to set short crosscuts on their ends, where gravity will still promote uneven spalt.

http://www.northernspalting.com/ for Sara, who did her dissertation on spalting. Her article in FWW is available to subscribers, at least. Less science, but nice pictures at http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/products/publications/specific_pub.php?posting_id=13608&header_id=p Interspersed with ozark folksy observations. http://www.hiltonhandcraft.com/Articles/Spalting_a_Fungus_Amongus.asp
 
My experience backpacking and hiking in the arid mountains of New Mexico and Arizona is that you probably won't run across spalting in that environment. Most of the trees that exist where I camped are ponderosa pine. The sapwood is gone very rapidly due mostly to insects and the heartwood lasts forever. If you find a hardwood tree lying on soggy ground near a stream then there is a possibility of spalting. You really need to see a cross section such as a tree that had been felled by a chainsaw to have a good idea about what is inside. I would say that the only good way to determine what is inside is by experience. Pick up a likely candidate and then peek inside. Reading about it won't answer all of your questions.
 
Ron, I will check and see if I have any logs that show, I know I have some Maple showing "red heart" (which is a rot that occurs in living Maple).

Around here the problem is not getting wood to spalt, it's keeping it from spalting. I once put a half-log end up on the shop floor and left it there to get to "later"... well it spalted.

Last year we had a visitor up from your area, he looked at a pile of saw-dust I had in front of the shop and asked what it was, I told him I just getting some Maple to spalt... The look on John's face, was, well, almost priceless. As all I did was leave it outside, under some chips for a few months.
 
My neighbor pushed over some trees with his dozer and left them in a field (previously orchard) for about a year. He has plenty of firewood (having just cleared the orchard) so he said help yourself. I found that quite few were spalted when I cut them. Some were too far gone and have been burned, but a few of them are getting turned.

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Ron, I have attached photos of end cuts from my log pile.
 

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George
Excellent photo's, note both the black zone lines and the pink areas. To me that implies two different types have colonized that log. Locally we also get some small yellow areas in Maple.

Ode
Yes, both, it depends on the climate though. Here, well, it's hard to stop wood from splating, in a drier area (like where you are), it all depends.
 
odie said:
Does spalting occur only on downed trees, or does it also happen with standing timber?

ooc
Click to expand...


We had a dead tree down the road from us and since I have to maintain the road, I went to cut it before it fell and blocked us in or out. The top of the stump where I cut it off was absolutely GORGEOUS! I was tempted to load up my generator and some sanders to finish the top of it.

Unfortunately, none of it really seemed solid enough to turn, and my lathe was down at the time anyway,
 
odie said:
Does spalting occur only on downed trees, or does it also happen with standing timber?

ooc
Click to expand...

The spalting occurs as part of the decay process, so it would have to be diseased/dying or dead already. So it could be standing, just part of the afore mentioned grouping.
 
Steve Worcester said:
The spalting occurs as part of the decay process, so it would have to be diseased/dying or dead already. So it could be standing, just part of the afore mentioned grouping.
Click to expand...

Hello Steve.......

Those who know for sure should give us their thoughts, but it's my understanding that spalting isn't necessarily a natural ingredient to the decaying process, but it requires water to become a part of that process of introducing those bacterias that produce the coloring effect. From the answers I see here, it looks like spalting does indeed occur in standing timber, but a downed tree will be more susceptible because water is a part of the equation in greater quantities, and for longer periods of time.

Hardwoods where I live are scarce, and I have little direct experience with them, but I did spent about ten years as both a logger and a lumber mill worker. During that time, I don't recall ever seeing spalting in standing fir and pine trees, but all of the logs, cants, and lumber I've seen have been free of spalting, that I can recall. (There is some room for error, because I'm drawing from memory that is over twenty years ago, and the subject of spalting was never anything I paid any attention to at that time.)

No downed trees are used in the lumber industry, or weren't at that time with federal and private timber sales, so I lack the benefit of seeing much cut logs from downed trees. Here, I do know that when a tree is down and laying on the ground that the decaying process is rapidly increased......but, the decaying process is also evident in the standing dead trees. The difference is that spalting and natural decay appear to not be the same thing, and that difference is the coloring that spalting produces, and the water element.

ooc
 
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Odie, the black spalting lines are actually not the decay lines. It's more lke turf wars between two different gangs of bacteria. Bacteria create the walls to keep other types of bacteria out of their hood. The actual decay is the soft white punky wood. Standing dead trees initially have plenty of water to support decay organisms. Whether a downed tree decays faster than a standing tree depends on where it falls. Obviously if it fell, a lot of decay has already occurred.

If there is only one type of decay bacteria, I suppose that you would not see any spalting even though the wood is rotting.
 
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Bill Boehme said:
Odie, the black spalting lines are actually not the decay lines. It's more lke turf wars between two different gangs of bacteria. Bacteria create the walls to keep other types of bacteria out of their hood. The actual decay is the soft white punky wood. Standing dead trees initially have plenty of water to support decay organisms. Whether a downed tree decays faster than a standing tree depends on where it falls. Obviously if it fell, a lot of decay has already occurred.

If there is only one type of decay bacteria, I suppose that you would not see any spalting even though the wood is rotting.
Click to expand...

Hello Bill.......

Interesting........well, I have little first hand knowledge about this, as applied to hardwoods, so I'm speaking outside of my knowledge of these things. I did have the understanding that the dark black lines were the result of water soaking to a certain point, then ceasing to progress further, then drying per climate change.......nothing to do with " turf wars between gangs of bacteria". I suppose I'm wrong about that, too?

ooc
 
odie said:
Hello Bill.......

Interesting........well, I have little first hand knowledge about this, as applied to hardwoods, so I'm speaking outside of my knowledge of these things. I did have the understanding that the dark black lines were the result of water soaking to a certain point, then ceasing to progress further, then drying per climate change.......nothing to do with " turf wars between gangs of bacteria". I suppose I'm wrong about that, too?

ooc
Click to expand...

I meat to say "fungi" and not "bacteria". Stayed up too far past my bed time. ZZZzzzz....
 
I agree with Bill, the black zone lines are indeed created by the fungus, white rot fungus I believe.

Our white and yellow birch will spalt on a pallet covered with a tarp, the bark will hold enough moisture.
 
George Van Beynen said:
I agree with Bill, the black zone lines are indeed created by the fungus, white rot fungus I believe.

Our white and yellow birch will spalt on a pallet covered with a tarp, the bark will hold enough moisture.
Click to expand...

Howdy George........

Isn't the black line fungus a result of the furthest point where the water has stopped soaking prior to retreating?

Like I say, I don't know these things as fact, but it was my understanding that the water soaking into the wood is what determines the point where the black spalt lines occur. Off hand, it makes sense to me, since at that point there is more moisture on one side of that spalt line and dryer wood on the other. It would seem that this might be a point where more growth of the fungi might exist because the differences on both sides of that line may contribute to conditions favorable to the black line effect.

If so, maybe Bill's analogy of "turf wars" may be more correct than I had originally been thinking.......😀

Thanks for the discussion.

ooc
 
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Howard Beaver said:
George thanks for the great reference.

Howard
Click to expand...

When I tried that link, my computer locked up and I lost some files.

In essence, does it say that water soaking into the wood does not effect the point where black spalt lines occur?

ooc
 
odie said:
When I tried that link, my computer locked up and I lost some files.
In essence, does it say that water soaking into the wood does not effect the point where black spalt lines occur? ooc
Click to expand...

Yes Odie.

"Zone lines are involved in the self-isolation of wood
decay fungi and the production of survival structures.
The volume of wood bounded by a single zone line
system usually contains a single genetic individual of
decay fungus. Different genetic individual s occur on either
side of a zone line. The degree of genetic difference that
results in zone line formation ranges from the large
dilference between an ascomycete and a basidiomyccte
or the comparatively small difference due to so ma tic
incompatibity within a single species ( 2}. Self-isolation
through the production of zone lines at the margins of
colonized space reduces competition from other potential colonizers."
 
George Van Beynen said:
Yes Odie.

"Zone lines are involved in the self-isolation of wood
decay fungi and the production of survival structures.
The volume of wood bounded by a single zone line
system usually contains a single genetic individual of
decay fungus. Different genetic individual s occur on either
side of a zone line. The degree of genetic difference that
results in zone line formation ranges from the large
dilference between an ascomycete and a basidiomyccte
or the comparatively small difference due to so ma tic
incompatibity within a single species ( 2}. Self-isolation
through the production of zone lines at the margins of
colonized space reduces competition from other potential colonizers."
Click to expand...

Thanks George.......

Consider me educated! 😀

ooc
 
Bill Boehme said:
Odie, you probably know the answer by now, but the answer for anybody who still doesn't know is that the spalting lines have nothing to do with a water line.
Click to expand...

Yep, Bill........that seems to be the way it is.

It's put a new twist on a long held belief I've had. Inconsequential though......doesn't change anything about how I deal with spalting, just the knowledge base concerning the origins of spalting.

It's all good, though! 😀

Thanks to all who contributed.......

ooc
 
And FWIW, for a long time I assumed that the black spalt "lines" was the decay. I can't remember where or exactly when I learned otherwise. Maybe I read the answer in one of Hoadley's books. It is sort of interesting that street gangs and fungi have something in common. 😀
 
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