Spalted Maple Table Set
The spalted maple for these tables came to me through a friend Raymond, who is always dropping off bits and pieces of wood, parts of old barns, broken pianos etc.
One day he told me about how our friend John had a bunch of big maple logs lying out in a field. The wood was to be cut for firewood, but some of the huge trunks were too big to easily manage, so they had been left in the field for 2 years. Raymond suggested that we energetically go and retrieve some for our own firewood, since John wanted them gone. In the process of rolling massive rugged hunks up onto his flat bed, I mentioned that if it was possible to cut these logs into boards, there might be some really interesting grain patterns caused by them sitting on the ground and starting to slightly decay.
Well, shortly after, Raymond told me that he had wrangled the last biggest trunk over to a Mennonite’s place, and it had been cut into boards. I went over with him and it overfilled my trailer. The maple had reached a state of spalting that was just amazing. It was caught in the process of decaying, rotting and returning to the earth... but the graphic figure in the wood was so completely alive.
I stacked it properly outside beside my studio for a year to dry, and then finally started cutting into it and selecting the salvageable wood. There is no selecting process I’ve ever seen that demands such a close eye, distinguishing the good from the bad. Some pieces were completely decayed beyond the state of stable, usable wood for furniture. Other pieces were a perfect sample of maple caught in the exact moment of spalting, before it turns into soft, crumbling “chicken wood”. But most pieces were a random combination of rot and stable wood, and it took 2 full days to go through it properly. In the end, it was about a 15% yield of workable wood, and 85% kindling.
