Sold Some Spalted Maple

[rarefish383]

A while back I milled 7 slabs of spalted Maple that were a bit over 20" wide and 7' long. A couple of the boards had a strip of included bark running through them. I cut 2, 12" pieces off the end to try out on my cheapo HF plainer. When I cut the boards off they broke in half at the inclusion, making 4 pieces. Ran them through the plainer, it worked well, and the boards looked very nice. Then I cracked the remaining 5' of board in half at the inclusion and ran the skinnier piece through the plainer. It looked nice too. I put the 4 little pieces on ebay with a $9.99 starting bid, no takers.

Two weeks ago we had our big spring farm and equipment auction (I posted pics of the industrial equip and saws in this sale last year, maybe you saw them). Well, I put the 4 little pieces in one lot and the 2 longer pieces in a second lot. One guy laughed and said that stuff's not worth anything, it's rotten. Well, he was wrong. I got $10 for the 4 little pieces and $35 for the 2 bigger ones. That was $45 for 1 so called rotten board. I'd like to project that out to see what my sale per cord would be. This is the board I got $45 for.

These are the whole pile for a little scale of the size of the boards.

Made a nice little birthday for me. The check came yesterday and I cleared $307 for a bunch of junk I'd been planning to sell in a yard sale and take the left overs to the dump, Joe.

 

[willbarryrec]

Well done!
Rep sent!

 

[SDB777]

If the spalting had been just a little more abundant....that could have been worth 10x that price.

For instance, I slabbed a piece of maple that was about 3x as spalted as your close-up shot.... Cut the slab into small chunks that measured about 2"sq x 4" long crosscut. Each piece? $4.00 plus shipping! There was 145 chunks...you get the picture.


And with profit like that, I've been trying some processes to 'speed up' the spalting of non-spalted wood. And with the temperatures coming back up(winters over in the south), my experiments will be in full swing shortly!




Congrats on the sale. Hope you have many more to fund your hobby!!!

Scott B

 

[rarefish383]

I've got plenty more to mill. Want to try to get to it soon while it's still cool and wearing the respirator won't be torture, Joe.

 

[buzz sawyer]

I've got plenty more to mill. Want to try to get to it soon while it's still cool and wearing the respirator won't be torture, Joe.

Glad to see you're wearing it.

 

[Hddnis]

Try putting maple logs on a pile of compost. I've done that and gotten really nice heavy spalting in a year or two. Some people have paid insane amounts for the boards I've cut. You just have to have space and time.



Mr .HE

 

[rarefish383]

I thought about sticking them in the old chip pile. I've got one that's ready to mill but it's too big for my 36" bar. I might flatten it off and then mini mill the sides, but I wanted to keep live edges on it. Maybe I'll just keep one live edge, I'll have to think about it, Joe.