Many of our customers love the look and feel of our spalted maple wood slab tables. In fact, it’s become one of our best selling slab species in Rochester, New York. But what exactly is spalted maple? We thought we’d explain a little bit about how exactly maple gets “spalted” in the first place and what that potentially means for the wood slab table that you may be thinking about…
So spalted is not a species of wood. There are various maple species such as Silver Maple or Red Maple. Spalted however represents a state of decay. So yes, that wood slab table you’re looking to buy with the interesting black lines and waves in it is actually a slab that has started to rot essentially.
The key with spalted maple is to ensure that the wood is rescued at the right time. Left too long and the decay will start to undermine the integrity of the wood slab. The black lines that you notice in a spalted maple wood slab are actually where fungus has stated to infiltrate and attack the wood. These lines really do give the wood slab incredible character and make the live edge table so much more interesting.
And if the wood slab—on top of the spalting—has signs of worm holes and /or beetle holes (for those after that distressed look) this makes for even more depth and dimension. As mentioned, it’s important to stop the spread of the fungus, and that is where kiln drying becomes so important to any wood slab table project in Rochester. We have a state of the art kiln—one of the only ones of its kind in the region. This enables us to preserve the spalted maple and thus create amazing wood slab tables for our Rochester, NY customers.
Serving Rochester, NY and the Surrounding Areas
We would love to collaborate with you on your next wood slab table project. If you can dream it up, we can certainly build it.