Great Find

[Hawk]

My Daughter and son in law cut down a tree in three yard earlier this spring. They live in southern Ohio.  I asked them to set aside a couple of logs for me being a wood holder that I am.

Anyhow I picked them up last week and has a chance to run the smaller one thru the bandsaw. I'm not the best at this and my bandsaw is not great either, but I got them closer to project size.

I got quite a surprise after the first cut. I'm thinking  spalted maple?

Now all I need is a planner or drum sander. (Ugh) Anyhow,  they need more dry time so I can figure out how I'll get these project ready. 

[rafairchild2]

Nice! I would agree it looks like spalted maple, I would love to get my hands on some 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 for some projects!  Hopefully your daughter has more of that for you!

[kmmcrafts]

I had about 60bdft of spalted maple given to me about 13 years ago.. I love it as it's beautiful wood but at the same time it isn't all that great for the type of scroll projects I make because the dark spots in it distract from the actual cutting itself and in some cases it is hard to tell the difference from the actual cutting and the colors of the wood until you get up close to it.. from a distance it all blends together I guess is what I'm saying. I still have about 30bdft of it I think, LOL.. beautiful for certain projects that IMO are not scroll sawn..

[FrankEV]

You better stack them with spacers and apply a heavy load on top of the stack to keep them flat while drying or you will have a pile of useless curled up and cracked pieces.   No need to plane untill they are dry.  7% on a moisture meter is your goal.  Will likely take a year or two.

[dgman]

5 minutes ago, FrankEV said:

You better stack them with spacers and apply a heavy load on top of the stack to keep them flat while drying or you will have a pile of useless curled up and cracked pieces.   No need to plane untill they are dry.  7% on a moisture meter is your goal.  Will likely take a year or two.

In addition to that, you need to seal the ends with latex paint or end grain sealer available at any woodworking store or catalog. If you don’t seal the ends, the boards will check or split. Also available at Amazon.

Edited September 12 by dgman

[Hawk]

5 hours ago, FrankEV said:

You better stack them with spacers and apply a heavy load on top of the stack to keep them flat while drying or you will have a pile of useless curled up and cracked pieces.   No need to plane untill they are dry.  7% on a moisture meter is your goal.  Will likely take a year or two.

Thats where they are now, stacked and sticked!

[Hawk]

On 9/11/2024 at 7:06 PM, kmmcrafts said:

I had about 60bdft of spalted maple given to me about 13 years ago.. I love it as it's beautiful wood but at the same time it isn't all that great for the type of scroll projects I make because the dark spots in it distract from the actual cutting itself and in some cases it is hard to tell the difference from the actual cutting and the colors of the wood until you get up close to it.. from a distance it all blends together I guess is what I'm saying. I still have about 30bdft of it I think, LOL.. beautiful for certain projects that IMO are not scroll sawn..

I agree on the not so good for scrolled projects. My plan is some kind of sign, possibly resin fill of something along the lines of an inlay that would "pop" out from the maple.