Nice bit of beech on the way

Gizmo

Saw this on the evilbay the other day and before i knew it my brain had checked out and payed for it

length - 1420mm,width - 280/330mm,thickness - 30mm

Looks like it has a bit of everything in there so should yield so interesting full size or bookmatched tops

There a smaller sister piece still up for sale HERE if anyone fancy's it,a bargain @ £27 delivered!

Anyhows here some pics

Andyjr1515

Wow - as you say, there's a bit of everything in there!

Kalimna

Nice. Dont often see ripple in beech - certainly not that extreme.
A few punky areas in the spalting - flood with thin cyano?

Adam

WezV

The spalted beech I have dealt with didn't seem to go as spongy as the white bits of spalted maple can.

i wouldn't expect it to need too much hardening, but you never know. 

I have soaked the some really soft bits of maple with super thin CA, it soaked up loads.  But then I needed to recarve a section and found it hadn't gone very deep at all

i wonder if plain old wood hardener would be worth a try. 

Kalimna

I have not used spalted maple before, but I have certainly used the beech that had some very soft areas - compressable with a fingernail easily. This when turning bowls for instance, or making boxes, I found that the cyano needed repeat applications, but worked well.

I also have no experience with wood hardener - what is it?

Cheers,

Adam

Roland

Wood hardener is designed to soak deep into softwood. It's often used on rotten window frames to prolong their life.
http://www.screwfix.com/p/ronseal-wet-rot-wood-hardener-clear-500ml/63540

WezV

Roland said:

Wood hardener is designed to soak deep into softwood. It's often used on rotten window frames to prolong their life.
http://www.screwfix.com/p/ronseal-wet-rot-wood-hardener-clear-500ml/63540

That's the stuff I was wondering about.  I used some for  its intended purpose of repairing a window last year and it got me thinking

Roland

It's happy to soak into rotten wood, and leave a plasticky surface. I'm not sure how far it would penetrate into a hard wood. It would certainly limit the choice of finishes. You wouldn't use a piece of wood like this and then paint it. You'd probably have to use a polyurethane varnish.

Kalimna

Again, never having used the stuff, I wonder about it's suitability regarding a finish to be applied over it, going from the comments above.

Obviously, this is all moot if there are no punky areas to the spalting. It's probably worth doing a test piece anyway, if only for future reference.

Either way, a nice bit o' timber...

Adam

Gizmo

Hey guys

Beech arrived today but its a little damp looks like Parcel Farce left it out in the rain,it was shrink wrapped and bagged but areas at top/bottom and side had been pulled off (looks like someone was trying to have a nose at what it was)

Anyhows the bit of spalting's solid non punky and the area at the center of it 1/3 down 2nd pic is a bark incursion 

Ive used that kind of Wood hardener on a burl top for a 6 string bass i built about 10 years back that was a little punky in places i just left it in a Wood hardener bath for a few days then let it dry and it finished it with danish oil & it came up fine

I'll try and grab a few wipe down pic's of this once i get this up the road,and a few more once its split/bookmatched