A piece of sugar maple

My nephew in America works at the New York Botanic Garden and found this piece of ‘sugar maple’. He thought it was a beautiful piece for me, so he mailed it to me. Now it’s drying in my basement and I’m really looking forward to the result when it’s dry.

Fruit wood

Last year a college gave me a few wood discs. It took me two years before I made something out of them and this is the result. It turned out to be a beautiful slim pen.

New pens

I think my daughter is kind of happy with her dad making pens. “Dad can you make a pen for one of my friends?” A good and easy present, not that I mind making them though. It gives me a reason to make an extra pen now and again. This one is made of spalted maple with gun metal.

And this one is made from Cocobolo with fancy gold.

Bowl of spalted maple

I saw a piece of wood on the side of the road with black lines in it and thought “That looks like fun” and took it with me.

It ended up in the backyard for about eight months and the moment I cut it in half I saw the beautiful lines are everywhere. I had no idea what kind of wood it was, so I took it with me to Inlands Hout in Burgum. It turned out to be spalted maple.

So what is the ‘spalted’ then? On ‘Meestal over planten‘ I found the following:

“I don’t know why it’s called ‘spalted’. But ‘spalted’ is the result of fungus in the wood and causes colorfull lines in the wood, mostly it causes lighter spots or a change of color (mostly blueish of pink). What I find most spectacular are the jagged dark lines.

Spalted doesn’t only appear with beech, but also with birch, poplar, maple and probably even more woods. Maybe even with all woods, but it’s not always visible. Spalted wood is mostly used for bowl making, because the lines make it very decorative.”

And it makes a extremely beautiful little bowl.