Don’t Cry over Spalted Wood

Built By CocinaDesigns for Building Moxie & Published May 12, 2010.
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On a recent trip to the sawdust-laden shop where Ben and Craig turn hunks of wood into fine furniture and cabinet boxes, I peer around. I survey several work benches where carcases in various stages lay like patients on gurneys. I ask the guys, as I always do, Whatcha workin on?

They tell me who they’re making a bookcase for and how they plan to detail a coffee table. We discuss a hutch project we’re collaborating on.

Hey, I want to show you something, says Craig suddenly. He fishes a 1×4 out of a pile. What do you think? I got a bunch of this stuff from a guy in Southern Oregon.

I can’t identify it, but I like the fine-grained sample with auburn streaks laced with fine brown and black veins. Hmm. Rustic Maple? I ask.

Turns out, Craig has a pile of Spalted Tanoak. And I’m told it’s most closely related to Beech.

Here’s a piece with some clear lacquer on it:

I discovered that the term spalted comes from an old loggers’ term for spoilt. Fallen, decomposing trees are lifted from their final resting places in forest beds or fished out of marshes for eager woodworkers.

Spalted is the term for the coloration that happens when fungi set up housekeeping in dying wood. The large discolored areas are one type of spalting: pigmentation or sapstain. Those lacey black and brown lines are called zone lines and they’re not actually a fungus, but an interaction zone in which different fungi have erected barriers to protect their resources.

Considered a link between the Chestnut and the Oak, Tanoak (lithocarpus densiflorus) is an evergreen hardwood. It has flowers like the chestnut and acorns like the oak and grows best on the humid moist slopes of the seaward coastal ranges.

Back in the 1800′s, when the fur trade was a booming business in Oregon, roads were built through the forests in order to log Tanoak. The tannin they produce was and is still used for treating furs and hides. Douglas fir trees were cut as a secondary use species while they were logging the tanoak. Today that’s reversed, and tanoak is logged only because the Douglas Fir trees are being cut.

My woodworking friends and I may use Spalted Tanoak for the Craftsman-styled hutch we’re collaborating on. Spalted wood also inspired these gorgeous projects:

I can picture other uses: a rounded lamp base, picture frames. Whatcha think?

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Notes from the hosts: We like to thank Kit for participating in the Tagged! project.  When she contacted me asking — ‘What should I write about?’, I suggested, “. . . Something regional to her.” And this is what she came up with.  I am certain that I cannot find this species in the woods behind *my* house. Please show your support by leaving a comment, an answer to her question.

Kit Tosello is a certified kitchen designer and writer based out of Central Oregon. She can be found blogging at http://highdeserthomecompanion.blogspot.com/, on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CocinaDesigns/, and on twitter @CocinaDesigns.