Wmcullen
Member
I was saving this spaltered dogwood blank from MRDucks2 and added a rosewood center band.
Thanks for looking
- Cullen
Rosewood band is one piece but carved with a strong crease to look like two. I'll defer to MRDucks2 to respond on the spalted nomenclature.Nice pen - especially the band. Is that rosewood one piece or two?
On the dogwood, I've got some maple that looks very similar, and I've always wondered whether it's considered appropriate to call it "spalted" when it's lacking the traditional black zone lines (or, if not, what it would be called... "fungal maple" doesn't really have a great ring to it).
I don't see much in the way of dark lines on the pen, but I do see a lot of more subtle lighter/darker patches, which is what I'm mostly seeing on this maple (it does have the occasional dark lines towards the ends on some pieces, but they're few and far between). It gives the wood a lot of character (both the maple and the dogwood), but without the prevalent zone lines I've never been sure what to refer to it as. On some pieces it comes out looking almost like antler.For the most part, if the discoloration is due to fungus combined with the rot it is considered spalted. Different woods spalt in different ways. If you look at the pen, you will notice some of the dark lines you see in other spalted woods, just not as prevalent.
Heh. I was almost going to mention that the dogwood (the maple, not so much) had vaguely ambrosia-ish patterning, but I was afraid that would just confuse the issue.Don't forget that you can achieve patterning in maple from the work of the ambrosia beetle, also. Which is the combination of the bug and fungus as I understand. Not sure if that same phenomena applies to any other woods or not.