My neighbor had this old hackberry tree cut down yesterday, I want to save as much of the spalt as possible.

Does anyone have recommendations on how to go about this?




thanks for any advice.

good looking stuff

I had artisan friends in Colorado that would work with that wood (spalted), they would even make the process happen somehow. they also worked with burls. All I recall is they would keep them indoors and dry them out, then work them into whatever they where making. Sorry I cant give more details, that is all I remember, watched them work more than anything. I do know they kept the wood inside for quite some time though.

That's going to make a lot of nice knife scales! I'd cut out the spalted areas that I wanted to keep and then seal them with a wood sealer and store them in a warm dry place so that they can dry very slowly. If they dry to fast they are prone to split and crack. They will probably need to dry for a couple years unless you cut them into smaller pieces.

Go to Woodcraft in Farmers Branch and get some wood sealer. You need to seal the open ends and you have a lot of open ends. Use paint if nothing else but do it quick. That will start checking rapidly.

I'm headed there tomorrow to pick up a gallon of anchorseal. We have one in Plano.

Thanks

Spaulted wood is actually decaying wood and is generally pretty soft. I would cut off most of the white wood then crosscut all the spault once it dries as Mike said. It will need to be stabilized before going on a blade.

Cut into into pieces while green about 2x the finished size then place in a paper bag of rice. Leave for a few weeks then pack the pieces up and send to a vacuum stabilizing company. Woodcraft sells a vacuum kit but a commercial company will do a much better job.

Woodcraft in FB id gone