Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Is it good idea to use spalted maple for stock?

I have done several walnut stocks but never done maple. I have a spalted maple blank I bought several years ago that I want to use for Argy 1909 based barreled action I bought from a fellow forum member. I didn’t know until now that spalted maple is actually caused by fungus. I am paranoid about everything that looks like a black mold. The wood will be sealed, of coarse, but I wonder if anyone has thoughts about it. Looks beautiful, though. Very dense grain, looks denser than English walnut.

Given the nature of spalted wood, may be difficult to get a useful opinion from anyone reputable who hasn’t first examined the blank. Suggest calling Wenig Custom Gunstocks and ask them, for I think they do a fair amount of maple. They will also machine inlet it if you chose to go that route.

Growing up in a sawmilling family, region, we called it punky or doody. And threw
it in the slab pile. I would want it stabilized before any more money was put into it.


Maybe it is still strong, but it has to have degraded some.


It makes an interesting look for grips or scales, a stock is another animal.


Maybe it's just prejudices, but that look invokes a negative response.


Don't get me started on "Live Edge" furniture!
Dad and Pap would have a conniption if they could see folks dropping huge
money on lumber that hadn't been edged. And mills acting like
bark on a board was something rare and special.

we cut a lot of spalted wood at the mill to be used for live-edge furniture. It IS beautiful stuff, especially in the light colored woods like maple. However, remember that spalting is actually the result of the beginning of the decaying or rotting process and with that is, or will be, the softening of the wood. I would say that if it is the very early spalting process, the wood will still have its normal hardness. But the more the spalting, the more the softening and if there is lots of spalting, there will be considerable softening.

Lots of guys use spalted woods by stabilizing them with epoxy. You could rough the blank, vac the blank with epoxy and finish.

You might email south cox and ask him as he does a lot of exotic woods.

Don't waste your time. Spalted wood is wood that is decaying and the fungus is already attacking the wood, creating the black streaks you see. Even if it seems solid in some areas, it will be soft and degraded in other areas, making it unsuitable for working, sanding, or taking finish properly- not to mention it may not be suitable for recoil resistance. Worst thing is you won't realize it until it is already cut and shaped and you've wasted time and money on it. Also, drying a blank that is spalted is iffy at best. Even if it shows it is dry in some areas, the degraded areas can hold a lot of moisture that will show up at the worst time.
Now, the reality is that if you have just a few very small spalt lines in restricted areas you may or may not be able to use it but the risk is still there. For example I have a piece of Spalted maple I just finished on a rifle. It has very small spalt lines in the gorgeous fiddleback maple from a tree I cut down many years ago. It finished fine and worked fine for the most part, but when I tried to checker it there were soft spots in some areas that constantly would cut deeper than the surrounding areas and caused hollow spots which stood out like a sore thumb. I had to sand all the checkering off and leave it without.

And forget trying to stabilize it properly. I stabilize knife handle wood with a vacuum chamber and stabilizing fluids as it should be done and it adds a huge amount of weight to the blank. Forget epoxy, it won't penetrate deep enough to actually stabilize the stock. If you like carrying a 20 lb + rifle into the field, you may consider it but I wouldn't entertain this thought.

Spalted maple is actually standing dead wood. It usually pulls minerals up into the stump so can look great, but the blank is only suitable for very low recoiling rifles like a 222, 223, etc., I would not cut one of the blanks that I have, for even a 308. I usually buy four tables at shows and will put a spalted maple blank out, because they show real well under bright lights, but they do not have much strength at all, on their very own merit. You could reinforce them with pillars, a block, 100% glass bedded, etc. But if it hits the floor, do not expect to pick it up in one piece.

I own a retail stock blank company, and that is about as fair of an appraisal of spalted wood as I can give you. As Sheister said, do not expect to stabalize one either, would be like carrying a gallon of epoxy or a rock around.

I would not on a rifle stock though these 20 year old spalted maple grips have done fine.

Caught at the proper time spalted wood can produce very nice stocks with plenty of strength. There is a lot of absolutely wrong info above. I have made and shown a number of spalted maple and myrtle stocks here before. They are still doing fine years later.

Splating is caused by fungi growing through the wood (hyphae is the term for the tiny hair-like growth.) There are many different species and they usually have a limited number of species they colonize. They are categorized by the type of action they have on the wood. The black cell type is the most desired in maple and does the least structural damage. The hyphae growing in the wood release digestive enzymes to break down sugars and some more complex carbs. Because multiple hyphae will grow through the same piece they digest the sugars out until they bump into a zone being digested by another hyphae. The black lines forming the lines between zones are not minerals. It is digested sugars that could not be recovered by the fungi.

There are many, many species of different kinds of fungi and imposters like "black line disease" in walnut which is actually a virus which usually attacks cherry trees. There is also a fungus that attacks box elder which produces patches of orange-pink which fluoresce bright pink under black light. Another here in alders makes emerald greens. Beech is notorious for great and wild spalting colors.

The bad fungi attack cell walls (lignin) immediately and produce a number of distinct damage types. White spot is common in soft maple and produces pale, blotchy areas which get soft quickly. Brown rot fungus is another bad one and produces soft brown zones quickly. And there are a ton more.

Bigleaf maple is the only common stock material which beats walnut in virtually every desirable mechanical category... ON A WEIGHT TO WEIGHT BASIS. Because almost all walnut is heavier it is still the better wood usually. There are bigleaf blanks around which get into the middle of the walnut density range. If the blank is dense enough and has no white or brown rot it will probably make a fine blank structurally.

A dense blank will checker just fine. A good seal coat of epoxy or CA will make a lighter stock quite checkerable. Avoiding high line count checkering is a good way to reduce the problem, as is a multi-line tool of 3 or 4 lines.

I’m a forensic wood expert within the boat building world but do lots of testing and custom furniture and boat building. I’ll make this short but spalted hard maple species are not the best candidate for applications where there is shock and compression. I’ll let it go at that. It’s pretty but not suitable

Rick

Please describe exactly which aspects of shock and compression you consider questionable in regard to hard maple.

Please expect very specific follow-up questions to define your concerns. Your concerns about hard maples are different from my comments about bigleaf but should be greatly minimized with hard maples.

Arguments from Authority are generally hollow and require a great deal of energy to substantiate. Vague statements presented as fact are open to serious inspections and any minor failure to support them create ever larger questions.

Feel free to visit the many websites using the Encyclopedia of Wood (US Forest Products Lab at Madison WI.) I will be using that data for very specific questions to start. They also published a large book on large wood timbers used in bridges which I will be relying on for gross data to back the small end of the extremes calculations. Fair warning: I may have had a hand in recalculating some of them based on weathering projections.

This one has a small amount of spalting in the fore end. It has been checkered since this photo was taken , it took the checkering fine and has held up perfectly

Nice looking rifle Brother irfubar, what caliber?

220 Swift with a 1/7.7 twist. It likes 70 gr Barnes TXS bullets at 3400 fps , wicked little low recoil set up

Cool, I really like the Tiger Shark Pattern in the wood, good stuff!

Crickets...

Tiger shark pattern??????????????????????????????????