# Spalted Walnut . . . . .



## TexasTimbers

Alright, all you non-believers. I dug deep deep deep into the very bottom of a long forgotten pile of rejects and retrieved the Monster from the Black Lagoon. I actually dubbed it The Gnarly One. 

This thing had a hollow center for so long before I felled it some 4 years ago, it had bark growing inside it. I thought bark had to have sunlight to grow. :no:










































Guys, this is splated Walnut heartwood. :yes: It isn't heavy spalting, and some of it is the natural black like dirtclod referred to, but some of it is obviously (at least to me looking at it in person) is spalt lines. None of the heart where black spalt lines exist, is punky at all. Most all of the sap is history, but where there is spalting in the heart it's still hard as a rock. I will send small samples of this to you who remain non-believers. 

I am a recent convert myself . . . like about one hour ago. While I have been joking around with it, deep down I assumed Walnut could not really spalt. I even said so in the "wicked " thread. But I think I just proved that theory incorrect. :icon_cheesygrin:


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## TexasTimbers




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## dirtclod

So you were waiting on the other thread for someone to take the bait so you could spring the trap :sneaky2:. Just because you found a tree that grew inside out :bangin:doesn't mean I'm ready to :surrender:. (If the sapwood is in the center, can you call it heartwood?:laughing I've seen this before and it was commented on by Dr. Gene :tt2:. He used some technical terms about the time I was going to :sleep1:. While I've never been known to walk lockstep with the good doctor, I still don't know if I could call it spalting. But if it looks like a duck...

I've done some walnut that had heavy spalting in the sapwood. Some of the boards had small amounts of the same light streaks in the heartwood as seen in your photos. The contrast muted significantly during drying. 

That last shot's a good one. I haven't seen one quiet that bad but my usual reaction is a disappointing "Oh sheit!"


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## Daren

Well I'll be darned, that is spalt in walnut...never thought I would see that.


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## TexasTimbers

dirtclod said:


> So you were waiting on the other thread for someone to take the bait so you could spring the trap :sneaky2:. Just because you found a tree that grew inside out :bangin:doesn't mean I'm ready to :surrender:. (If the sapwood is in the center, can you call it heartwood?:laughing


Whoaaaaaa. I didn't spring any trap. When I started that thread I had no idea I'd actually find a spalted walnut. Ever. And that isn't sapwood that has the spalt. It's the light colored heart that you often see when you open a walnut but it turns dark again after exposure. 

I assure you if that was sapwood it would have been rotten or at least punky, but it's hard as you'd expect walnut to be. No tricks going on here. It's as you say . . . a duck.


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## mdlbldrmatt135

get out the :boat: cause I'm drooling over that stuff!!!


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## TexasTimbers

mdlbldrmatt135 said:


> get out the :boat: cause I'm drooling over that stuff!!!


Hey brother, when that gal of yours, gets that guy of hers, to get her book-matched artwork-to-be of hers, out of his attic and into his shop, maybe I'll send that man of her's some of this stuff so he can make something else for her. But first thing's first. :laughing:


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## mdlbldrmatt135

I'm sure I'll be crawling up there in the morning.... ya know when it's cooler and stuff... yeah that's it!!


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## Chad

That is cool, now you just have to figure out a faster way to get it to spalt. Just curious when you get the stuff everyone drools for , how do you price it? that could be priceless.


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## Gerry KIERNAN

That is fantastic looking wood.

Gerry


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## TexasTimbers

Chad, 

Succinctly, it's subjective. But I am rarely succinct so I'll elaborate on how I do it.  Actually this is a very good question and a rare opportunity for me to actually share some potentially useful knowledge with others, and maybe other sawyers will also throw in some nuggets for us as well. 

Pricing rarities of any kind is generally by-the-piece, no matter the route the seller uses to get there, and there are a LOT of ways to arrive at the price. 

For example, pricing one-of-a-kind boards but that are in a broad category such as Flame Boxelder, is pretty involved, though now it is automatic to me 98% of the time. Rarely do I look at a board and ask myself "Hmm. What category does this go in?" Although that does happen on rare occasion ~ say 2% of the time (hey my math jibes!) and I do have a category for that too as you'll see. I have 7 distinct and separate categories that I've come up with, so as I saw I first categorize each piece; it happens in my mind automatically as I saw now. I used to have to refer to my sheet of paper where I scribbled the categories down, and I used to have 14 freaking categories at one time, but I was able to pare that down and group some of the boards in the same cat. 

An example of this is, many of the larger logs that I harvest near one section of the creek contain birds eye *and* curl. For whatever reason about half of these logs have a lot of sapwood in relation to heart. But most of the logs in this same area that have mostly heart, also contain bird eye and curl, and a lot of these logs also produce burl. I used to have 3 separate categories for wood that had these characteristics. But I now have one category with the same baseline price per board foot, because I realized I was selling all these characteristics in the same general price range, and these characteristics were occurring about the same frequency in my logs. So now when I take a board that has one or more of these characteristics, I categorize it, then I automatically know to start at $xx and add any premium on top . . . per the piece.

If I look at a board and decide I'm going to resaw or crosscut it, I will draw a line or lines to make it into two or three boards and then scribble down the prices on each "board" right then and there. Sometimes of course when I look at it in the shop I change it based on something I missed, or if I have an email asking for a specific size with specific characteristics then a board I marked up for crosscut might be the perfect match to fill that order, so I sand the pencil marks off and re-price it. The price is not always the same as it was for the sum of the individual boards that I would have cut from it. It depends on what my little bitty tiny brain tells me. I know that doesn't make sense but I usually don't change it. It's like I have software in there that does this. I am not conscious of a thought process about 98% of the time. But I have priced thousands of pieces of wood this way. And when I say "board" I also mean turning blocks as well. I do not have separate cats for blocks and boards; each cat is simply a "file" for wood that contains certain "characteristics", and then I add whatever premium to each individual board, if any, on top of that. 

I don't usually measure the board or block because for the most part I can look at it and figure the BF close enough to give it the baseline price, unless I am filling an order where an exact number of BF has been requested then I will scribble the measurements on the board itself. For real-world example, Cat 3 which is flat sawn with prolific amounts of long red streaks with no other characteristics (like burl, curl, crotch, tiger striping, birds eye, quilting, mottle, etc.) starts at $xx a board foot, and I don't usually add a premium to this cat. To fetch more, it has to have something else going for it. Like yellows and greens and blacks which are also sometimes found in this wood. I dance an Irish jig when I cut into one of those. Cat 3 can also have spalted and then of course that gets a premium. 

The exception to all of this is cat 7. It has no baseline price. The last revision of my category list (the whereabouts of which I no longer know) is labeled as "Miscellaneous" to hold everything that wouldn't fit into any other cat, but essentially it is the "Extremely Rare" category. 

Now the question you might ask is, how do I price a piece like Spalted Walnut, which has no broad category at all? I actually have an extremely scientific, very deliberate, highly accurate, but very easy system to price something like that. It's a trade secret that I'm going to reveal for the first time, right here.




I call Daren and ask . . . "How the heck am I gonna come up with a price for that walnut?" to which he will respond "I don't man. Don't ask me!" and then I don't say anything. I just keep my pie hole shut, because I know in about 3 seconds he can't stand the silence any longer and he'll proceed to give me 3 or 4 good ideas. :icon_cheesygrin: 

Yep, _The Daren Method of Pricing Rare Stuff Cut from Trees_ is a great system. Fast, easy, accurate.


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## greg4269ub

i was always under the impression that spalting was a result of disease the tree had when it was still alive. after reading thru the formun posts this must be wrong. how does it occure and how do you know if a log has it or not before you cut into it?


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## Daren

It happens after the tree is dead, fungus attacks the sugars in the wood cells in an attempt to break the log down (Mother Nature wants it back) and feed the forest with the decayed remains.

You can tell by looking at the end of the log before you cut it. Here is a picure of a spalted white oak (not common, white oak is very decay resitant) I milled.


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## TexasTimbers

"Spalt" is a fungus. It can occur in living or dead trees. It will not occur in live "healthy" trees. There are different types of spalting but the most favored is the fungus which develops into the black lines. Sometimes you can see spalting in a standing tree. Most notably, the red oaks that have caught the oak wilt diesease will die very rapidly and begin to spalt almost immediately. I have cut a lot of spalted red oak trees down. If you catch them just rigth the wood is still hard enough to be used but has so much spalt you can see it on top of the smooth, dead bark. 

Usually you cannot see spalting on the outer tree though. Usually by the time you can see it, it's too late to be of any use. Best way to spalt a log is to expose it to high heat and humidity and keep it in the shade. This means no air flow, which means keeping it covered with leaves etc. 

Arkansawyer, known to several of us here, is famous for his spalting abilities. He spalts "by the dark of the moon", and also uses Colt 45 (the beer not the caliber) in his process. He fells from March to May, lays the logs in the woods in high grass for two years, then cuts them open in the spring. He dead stacks the boards leaving as much sawdust as possible on the boards, and sprays Colt 45 between each board. He then covers this concoction for roughly 3 weeks. It's easy to go too long or not long enough using this method because too long, and as he likes to say " . . . it don't even make good firewood if you go too long . . .". 

He wouldn't reveal his secret for many years though many did ask for it, and knowing Arky, IMHO there's no guarantee he revealed everything in this recipe either. I know that I have shared my method before, but not ALL of it. :no:


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## Daren

TexasTimbers said:


> Yep, _The Daren Method of Pricing Rare Stuff Cut from Trees_ is a great system. Fast, easy, accurate.


For _you _maybe :laughing:



TexasTimbers said:


> I call Daren and ask . . . "I don't man. Don't ask me!"


5+ years...still can't take a hint :lol:

I'm just having fun, you know that...I would say that spalted walnut is worth about $1 bft...PayPal ok ? :shifty:


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## TexasTimbers

I see your game. You won't tell me what my sharpening tab is so you can have leverage on the spalted walnut. :laughing:

Joking aside, if you aren't going to bill me, I am going to send you a slab of spalted walnut as punishment. That will force you to do hard labor in creating one of your work-of-art coffee tables. :yes:

Thought you could give me the short end of the stick . . . Ha! I'll show you! :w00t:


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## Chad

I understand the pricing. Was just curious thanks for the answers. Not sure if one piece is enough punishment for Daren better go with two and make him learn a lesson.


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## Daren

I like the way you think Chad, I _am_ a slow learner. :shifty:

TT I was going to put the invoice in the box...then when it was all taped up, the invoice was still laying on the bench :huh: I did such a good job with the tape (and I was running low on more handy) I wasn't going to cut it open just for that. Then I got busy and forgot, I figured I would be talking to you again anyway. I just sent one out via email.


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