If you’ll be in Stockholm August 31st-September 2nd, swing by the Näringslivets Hus Konferens & Restaurang. The annual meeting of the IAWS is taking place there, and I’ll be presenting a poster on August 31st about spalting logs.
This is a great conference to check out if you are interested at all in wood, wood design, or wood science. The theme for this year is ‘novel materials from wood or cellulose’, and the list of talks looks incredible!
Thanks for your enthusiasm etc. re. spalted wood. I am CRAZY about spalted wood – I have a whack of maple that I got a sawer friend to saw for me, and I plan to use it as wall covering in my kitchen. It was from a dead tree Quebec Hydro cut down on my land. I wish I had asked for it to be sawn thinner – one piece is 2 inches thick! But spalted amazing. hues of orange, black ink lines, curly stuff – it is wild. Probably nobody would sell wood this degraded. But I love it.
I will be in Toronto next Mon-Tues, but alas, am heading to Calgary to look after my nephew so can’t attend the spalting workshop. I didn’t know there was much interest in spalting – you rarely see it sold anywhere.
Nancy
Question: I have been airdrying and stickering my wood for a year or more — is there any health concern about not putting it in kiln?
Sorry for the delay in reply – the new site is still being migrated and occasionally goes down.
Spalting is actually sold a number of places in the States, so I don’t know why its so under-marketed here in Canada. I know Haliburton Research Forest will be carrying it soon, as I’m working with them on getting reverse kilns operational for mass spalting.
In answer to your question – contrary to popular belief, kiln drying won’t kill fungal spores on wood. The fungus will die when the wood has been dried for several weeks, with our without a kiln, but there is little that will kill the spores short of a pressure cooker. Its only the surface fungi (which are not responsible for spalting) which may potentially be a problem, and you can kill off most of them by spraying the surface of your wood several times with 91% isopropyl alcohol (no lower concentrations, and readily available at Wal-Mart). You can also spray a 10% bleach mixture on the surface, then wipe off. Those two are what we use in the lab to keep things sterile, and they do pretty well.
Can’t wait to see photos of what you do with your spalted wood!
Dr_Spalting