Hi Rehd
We had to do about 140 acres of my own place a few years ago. The explaination Forestry gave was that it was uniform growth pine that was too thick (all had started following a fire in the 30's) As it choked out, it lost its vigour which allowed the pine beetles to invade. A rapidly growing young tree produces enough sap to push the beetles out, the trees like ours which had stopped growing were not producing enough sap so the beetle was able to invade. The wood was discolored by the beetle tunnels. My understanding of spalted wood is that it is partially decayed wood -- most common source is from stumps although, because of its value to wood turners, it is being artifically made by burying wood now. The blue pine is just from beetle infested trees which may or may not be dead so strength may not be an issue depending. The story I have heard is that a couple of ladies in one of the western states were using it and started marketing it as denim wood. It caught on and now fetches a higher price -- of course this is long after my stuff was sold.
take care
don
: Don

: I helped clear about 1,200 acres of pime a few years ago as those bettles
: were getting into them. They were dying and the needles were all falling
: and ruining some good grazing areas. This guys cattle wouldn't eat the
: grass with the pine needles in it. So, he dozed them over and we cut them
: up. This left nothing but Oak, scrub oak and manzeneda(?). But, I
: digress.....

: The majority of the trees we took out had the spalting in them but we didn't
: really look into them all. Just cut them onto rounds. I never did make the
: connection between the two.. What I was told at that time was the trees
: were diseased and that allowed the beetles to invade them and.... ??

: Too bad we weren't in any position to harvest that stuff... and mill it...
: The land owner wanted it cut up for firewood and was selling it about as fast
: as we could cut it each season.

: I think that random steaking would make for a very interesting deck design
: but would take some good matching skills to get it all in order.

: At the time I had no clue what kind of pine we were cutting, but the pine we
: get around here ( suppliers ) is Ponderosa and I've seen spalting in some
: of it. Although they haven't gotten to the point where they pull it out
: and seperate it with a different price.. ??

: One thing I've noticed is that stains really soak into those areas so care
: has to be taken to eliminate dark splotches.

: O.K., now I'm curious.. Time to go scouting the wood piles again....

: Rehd