John Daugherty
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- Location
- Oliver Springs, TN
Saved this one from the firewood pile. It was a 10 footer about 14 inches at the small end. My BIL milled it up today. Wasn't a huge log but we got four or five 14 inch boards.
I've seen this in a couple of Youtube videos. I'd like to get some to make a few bowls. I understand this is a kind of spalting, not a species of maple. Is that right?
Just to technically comment, I don't see beetle holes and this looks more like spalted Maple probably caused by center infection. You see a lot of maples with hollow centers due to water/fungi being introduced by limb die back, frost cracks, wind damage, etc.
Here is a picture of a bowl made from ambrosia Maple
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct...6BZbOzAS0XQejPY0oYC5UcKg&ust=1487076976830021
You know, I am used to looking at things from a technical point of view and get rather narrow focused sometimes. Soooooo.....I gave myself a slap in the brain and remembered that "of course trees like people can only catch one disease in their lifetime." Duhh.... I can see both types of spalt in the first photo. Very possible that it is both, who knows. It's one of my favorite woods regardless and I absolutely hate burning it when I run into it when firewood cutting. So usually I got it sawed into lumber like you did.
I did at one time attempt to spalt whole hard maple logs and got some good results. Thought about trying to commercialize and market spalted woods. There was a doctoral study of this a few years ago and by introducing different strains of fungi, different colors can be achieved.
Local mills will sell it in the same bunk with regular soft maple lumber so you can find ambrosia maple boards mixed in. Often there is some curl as well so it doesn't hurt to keep an eye out. Curly ambrosia maple is really nice.
It is Roger. The way I understand it is the ambrosia beetle bores in and introduces a fungus that causes the streaks. Here's another board picture.