Spalted honeylocust - Woodworking Talk

**Daren** · 05-03-2009, 09:01 AM

Has anyone had any luck spalting honeylocust ? Or seen it ? I know it gets punky, unfortunately a perfect looking log can have bad spots in the heartwood. But that is in the growth stage/while the tree is standing because I have milled them the day they fell and ran into punk.

I have a couple really big ones I "forgot" about late last summer (kinda buried them with other logs) I was doing some log moving yesterday and the bugs have not gotten to them from what I can tell, that would be my first concern.

Are they going to spalt this summer ? Or just rot ?

jeffreythree · 05-03-2009, 11:48 AM

I have a couple of pieces of spalted honey locust around here somewhere. It isn't particlularly pretty, sections of it just seem to be browner than others with none of the defined lines like sycamore or maple. A couple of boards did turn into a cool freckle pattern, which is the reason I bought the lot. The freckle boards are also the only ones without punky spots, so it must be right on the edge of the spalted area or it wasn't left very long. I will see if I can find them and get a pic.

phinds · 05-03-2009, 11:49 AM

Darren,

As you know, I've spent a little time checking out different types of wood and I have never run across spalted honey locust. That certainly isn't definitive, but it's a clue.

Paul

jeffreythree · 05-03-2009, 12:54 PM

Well, it ended up being black locust:

**TexasTimbers** · 05-03-2009, 02:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffreythree

... A couple of boards did turn into a cool freckle pattern...

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffreythree

Jeff, those "freckles" look a whole lot like bird peck. I've never seen it that prolific though so it might be something else.

the boards are not "spalted" yet though although you can clearly see the whitish bacteria of the beginning stages of it. They just needed to cook a few more months to get the black spalt lines. Still pretty wood though.

Daren, I *think* I have some spalted HL out there. Unless I post pictures though it's a myth so I will nose around today. FINALLY quit raining. I know it's rare though and I haven' thought about it until you mentioned it.

It seems that the more rot resistant a species is the harder it is to spalt. ??? Maybe that's why your BL didn't go all the way to full tilt spalt Jeff. Black Locust is about as rot resistant as it gets.

**Daren** · 05-03-2009, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TexasTimbers

It seems that the more rot resistant a species is the harder it is to spalt. ???

Yep. That is why I was so surprised to find a finely spalted white oak...that stuff is very decay resistant wet/dry. Could have been a total fluke though. The species with a high sugar content (sugar maple being the most common but all maples do) seem to spalt very well and sycamore, hackberry, sweetgum...I don't know. I have plenty of honeylocust milled. I am going to give it a shot, if they rot and the bugs eat them I will know then and it only cost me a couple logs. They are buried in leaves under my "spalting tree" monster tulip puplar that shades 1/2 my yard.

**TexasTimbers** · 05-04-2009, 12:03 AM

After I got through screwing around in the shop early afternoon, I decided to start knocking slabs of boxelder to make cants, to stay ahead of the blue stain.

I drove by this honeylocust that I had figured might have some spalt in it, remembered this thread and decided to throw it on the mill . . . .

No mushrooms or heavy fungus so I knew it wouldn't be heavily spalted, but since Daren asked the question it had my curiosity up . . . .

Not looking too good for spalt but I wasn't gonna take it off the mill. It wasn't in the spalt pile anyway it was just laying around on low priority.
Wow! Look at all that spalt!

Oh well it wasn't a total loss. The whole log was sound with good character . . . .

After taking this log apart, I got the feeling that by the time any spalting occurred in the heart, the sap would be rotten. That honeylocust is just some dense stuff.

**TexasTimbers** · 05-04-2009, 12:19 AM

Another look at some of the honeylocust . . .

Had to cut some pepper mill blanks for an order. I took them out of a log trying to go denim, and starting to spalt in places. A little punk but not too much . . .

Cut some nice table tops today too. I knew when I took the first couple flitches, this log would have some purty in it . . . . .

These were in the next cuts . . . .

i milled in a swamp today. My feet look 90 years old they're so wrinkled, but if I'd had more fun I would've been dragged off to prison. I didn't take many pictures. Most of what i cut today was just making cants and stacking them. No rain for another day and a hlaf so I will be millin like a villian before the next round of storms.

**Daren** · 05-04-2009, 07:43 AM

I think that answers my question, the bark has slipped off your log and the sap is barely even spalted. The ones I was talking about the bark is still on and no signs of mushroom yet after a year in the mud...I am not even going to wait, just mill them for un-spalted lumber since they do not look like good candidates. Oh well I will have spalted sycamore and maple coming out my ears in a couple months.

**TexasTimbers** · 05-04-2009, 10:52 AM

Just to reinforce it even more, this morning I remembered this standing dead HL I ran across last year, and even found the pictures on one of my chips. It had been dead for so long it was rotten in the ground. I pushed it over, sawed a few logs out, and was going to load it but ended up leaving them in favor of higher grade stuff. But look at the end grain ~ if HL would spalt easily you would think this log would have, but the heartwood of this log was still as hard as an ironwood.

Don't know how much you can tell from these pictures, but this log *did* have shrum-type fungi growing on it. You can see the formations in the last picture, yet the end grain shows no signs of any spalt, which is why I left it in the woods. I totally forgot about this until this morning sippin coffee with the wifey. I had already answered this question last year.