Can Softwoods Spalt?

[Bryan Milham]

As the title says, can softwoods spalt.

I ask as I work in an environment that has a lot of trees around our buildings. Last year some of them were thinned and the trunks (up to 10" dia) were stacked for the bugs to live in.

So I have my eye one a few nice pieces of Maple and Birch that are getting close to being nicely spalted.

But they also took down a few Scot's Pine. Looking at the cut ends, they seem to be colouring nicely, but I've never heard of softwood being spalted.

Is it spalting or is it just turning to mush?

[bodrighywood]

Some pine usually have a lot of resin which seems to inhibit spalting but some seem to spalt though the line between spalting and rotting is IME very thin.

Pete

[Les Symonds]

Hi Bryan....I had some Leylandii that I cut back in 2010 and few of the pieces had some fine colour in them...certainly looked like spalting. I've not got the images on the computer that I'm using now, but will have a look when I get home tonight.
Les

[TWiG]

In a way yes ... Monkey puzzle does .... but spalting is not like the rich black lines that we associate with spalted beech for example .... conifers in commercial forest are not felled and left hanging around in summer months due to what is known as blue green stain which discolours the wood making it worthless for joinery timber but fine for pallets , pulp etc... I have recently seen some Tsuga heteropyhlla  ( hemlock ) with strong discolouration and some Pinus radiata ( monterey pine ) which is almost black but still solid !!   The white sapwood of yew can get slightly spalted as well  but generally spalting in softwoods is rarely considered beautiful enough , or readily available enough to be worth bothering with ... however any oddities that may turn up will have that rarity "kudos " to be of interest ...... Terry...

[Paul Hannaby]

I have turned a few pieces of softwood that had spalted so yes, it can!

[The Bowler Hatted Turner]

All timbers could theoretically spalt due to the nature of their structure. Whether it is an attractive feature, and that does not only mean good looking , or not is a different thing.
Softwood with a blue sap stain, although still structurally sound, was not deemed to be suitable for good quality joinery so it was rejected. There has always been a certain amount of reluctance, within the building industry, to introduce any type of fungus, alive or dead, into a building. The same applies to wood that has been infested with boring beetle.
Care should be taken to ensure that any type of disease or infestation is not passed around the country. We used to bleach blue sap stain under pressure to kill off any spores.
Regards
John BHT

[Bryan Milham]

Thanks guys, interesting answers. I had not thought of the spalting in Yew although I'm used to seeing it.

Terry, John, yes it's the Blue Stain I can see on the ends, so maybe I'll snaffle a log away and have a play, just to have a look-see!

[Les Symonds]

Hi Bryan....I was cleaning out the back of the log-shed yesterday and came across some lumps of softwood from trees that we cut in our garden, 3 years ago. This particular piece came from a spruce and now that I've seen how it spalted, i wish that I'd been a bit more savvy and saved the wood before it got too soft.



The trunk was about 15" diameter where this piece was cut, so this block measures 15" by about 6" on the end grain.

Les

[Bryan Milham]

Ohhh,

pretty, is it spalting or some sort or staining, but if as you say it's gone soft then I'd definitely go with spalting.

Is it thick enough so that it can be cut into sections and used to make apples?