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As far as I know, the black lines in spalting occur when two competing fungal colonies interact. They are very much 'battle lines'.
Beech produces some of the nicest spalting available, but is otherwise a fairly dull wood. I do have some rather nicely patterned spalted birch, but it has gone too far to do anything major with - the rot has turned the wood soft.
One way to stabilise the softer spalting is to flood it with thin superglue. I imagine thin epoxy might work too, but I haven't tried that.
Some nice guitars up above
Adam
In my experience, its not foolproof and might not penetrate as much as you expect.
I did a carved top which I stabilised with the thinnest superglue before carving. I used a few bottles until it stopped soaking in. But when carving I found it had only hardened the top 2 mm and I was quickly back to soft wood.
The second blackburst above used an acrylised spalted maple top - basically pressure treated with an acrylic resin and cured in a special oven to make it consistently hard all the way through
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Wez - Is there a way to use an acrylic resin for stabilising without specialist pressure treatment? Having done a little woodturning with spalted wood, I know what you mean about the sinkage being less than you might hope. I suppose one way to approach it (if using as a thinnish cap) might be to treat the underneath with cyano and then the top surface once near finish-carved.
Adam
I don't know - Larry Davis (Gallery Hardwoods) used to do it and I had a few tops and fretboards from him, probably about 12 years ago and he was always talking about retiring back then. The exchange rate made it very reasonable back then.
@Skelf might know more on that front
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I'm sorry, but this pun deserves more praise than it's got!
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