Spalted maple is maple wood with dark veins caused by a pattern of rot or bacteria in the wood. Once stabilized, this wood is very striking as it often looks like a pen and ink drawing through the wood. Good spalted maple is hard to find with intricate veins. I frequently walk through the woods with my wife and am distracted by fallen maple timber that is either in it’s spalted prime to be cut and stabilized or past it’s prime and decomposing. Turning spalted wood also is quite challenging because you are looking for the best figuring in a very small surface area (being the seat itself), I usually explain that it is a bit like unearthing a fossil. Sometimes the planets are aligned and something magnificent shows up that has the perfect hue, symmetry, and figuring for the intended rod. Stabilizing is a must if you are to work with spalted maple. There is a kind of poetry involved when crafting spalted wood because one has actually rescued the wood and put it into stasis, you literally h...