working with spalt

[AkDan76]

I'm curious, I've been going through the pages and have noticed some spalted wood for calls, both boxes and pots.

How in the world are you working it?  I've been working on a piece of spalted birch for a jewelry box top for months and I'm starting to finally get close to being able to glue the thing together.   I'm using shellac to finish it up which is one of the issues.

The other is the fact it basically disintegrates when worked.   At one point I considered sending it off and having it stabilized but decided against that.   Today I'm starting to regret the decision not too.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[M,Yingling]

Thiers many stages of spalt the wood is basically rotting the sooner you catch the spalted and get the wood dried the harder the wood is going to be ,,, left to rott to long and you end up with punky wood that's a bear to work and would need stabilized ,,,me I like to take finger nail if it sinks in wood it needs stabilized  if not hopefully it will work good   

[AkDan76]

Thanks M!   I didn't reckon there was any secrets too it....but I had to still ask lol.

This stuff I'm working with is hard non spalt on the outside and extremely spalted in the middle.   complete with figured birch on the unspalted stuff...its quite the piece and its a pain in the rear!

been doing a bunch of digging on CCO and saw a handful of spalted boxes...good stuff.

Does stabilizing change the sounds on a spalted box?   I've yet to try spalt on a pot call either, I wonder if a stabilized pot would sound significantly different.  So far most of my pots are generic walnut, nothing fancy.