Like a lot of turners I keep my eye out for free wood and logs with some character. My son leases a barn on a farm across town for his timber framing operation, so I asked the owner if I could retrieve blowdowns from his sugarbush. I found several likely hard maple logs and Miles was kind enough to pull them out with his tractor and grapple forks and truck them to my place on his flatbed dump truck. One of them had to have been down at least two years as there was moss and some grass growing on it, but it seemed sound enough and had some burly growths. The other two were along the bed of the brook that runs through the property and looked to have arrived there recently. Those two run 22-24" in diameter while the tri-lobed older one is upwards of 30".
That was last July and they have been sitting full-length on shallow bunks on the ground since. For various reasons I was unable to do any turning until recently and I expected the wood had turned to mush, but not so. The older, larger log is mostly quite sound though greyish in hue and has a modest amount of spalting, though less than expected. The other two have a few tinges of spalt around the outside but by and large have little degrade. I decided to try to force some more spalting in those logs, so I crosscut a number of sections and stood them up on the ground endways. I painted dilute Titebond on the exposed ends, then scored the ends and sides and brushed on a slurry of water, a bit of glue and sawdust from some green, heavily spalted wood I had been turning. I covered the upturned end grain with shavings, sprayed everything with water and covered most of the pile with poly sheeting. I wish I had done this earlier in the summer but we should still have a good 6 weeks of warm enough weather to encourage the fungi.
This may be coals to Newcastle as the two smaller logs already have some spalting started, The inoculation with spalted sawdust may be ineffective, but sitting with endgrain on the ground and keeping a tarp over the pile should promote further fungal growth. I can always continue spalting after roughing out if desired. Now I need to work my way through this stockpile starting with the big log. I do need to split the sections lengthwise through the pith when it stops raining, but the long log sections show only a little cracking through the pith up to this point.
That was last July and they have been sitting full-length on shallow bunks on the ground since. For various reasons I was unable to do any turning until recently and I expected the wood had turned to mush, but not so. The older, larger log is mostly quite sound though greyish in hue and has a modest amount of spalting, though less than expected. The other two have a few tinges of spalt around the outside but by and large have little degrade. I decided to try to force some more spalting in those logs, so I crosscut a number of sections and stood them up on the ground endways. I painted dilute Titebond on the exposed ends, then scored the ends and sides and brushed on a slurry of water, a bit of glue and sawdust from some green, heavily spalted wood I had been turning. I covered the upturned end grain with shavings, sprayed everything with water and covered most of the pile with poly sheeting. I wish I had done this earlier in the summer but we should still have a good 6 weeks of warm enough weather to encourage the fungi.
This may be coals to Newcastle as the two smaller logs already have some spalting started, The inoculation with spalted sawdust may be ineffective, but sitting with endgrain on the ground and keeping a tarp over the pile should promote further fungal growth. I can always continue spalting after roughing out if desired. Now I need to work my way through this stockpile starting with the big log. I do need to split the sections lengthwise through the pith when it stops raining, but the long log sections show only a little cracking through the pith up to this point.
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