I've been thinking about picking up some spalted maple to turn some pots out of, and my question is. Does this stuff need to be stabilized, or can it just be turned and finished as all other woods? Or is there anything else I should be worried about? Thanks in advance for any input.
Choose your wood wisely, some can be very soft and rotten and your call won't sound for beans, if the wood is good and solid. I've never stabilized any of mine, but just make sure it's good solid wood.
Hey guys, new to the site and as I've recently turned a few spalted maple calls I thought I'd chime in here.
No issues here, the calls have all come out looking and sounding quite nice. The only thing worth mentioning from my experience was that on my first one I attempted to sand the call on the lathe with paste wax... this caused the spalting to bleed out and dye the call a bit, and I ended up having to dry sand that one back down a bit.
Tung oil makes for a nice finish on spalted maple.
If you can push your thumbnail into the wood, it needs to be stabilized. I cut some hard maple that had some spalting and it turned fine. On the other hand, I have turned spalted maple, oak and sycamore that sounded like poo because it was too soft. Some woods just need to be stabilized before turning. If you need someone to do your stabilizing, I have used River Ridge in Wisconsin with good results. You can google them to find a web address.