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Hello, i bought this slab of Ash and on one side it has these greyish stains and white stains. I tried sanding but it doesn’t come off. I’m just curious if its a fungus or mold or something else like sap stain.

Looks like spalting to me which is caused by a fungus.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Thank you! If I use it for a project do you think It will be ok structurally?


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Sticker stains. It is cosmetic.

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John

What Jim said and the 2 cross grain bars look like sticker stain where wide stickers were placed for drying. That whole surface looks like it got moldy maybe where a tarp was over the pile during drying.

It might plane off or sand off if you go a little deeper.

The other little boat like marks look like they might be bark inclusions.

As long as the wood is hard and not punky or soft to a fingernail, spalted wood is used for furniture and sometimes instruments too, more so for electrics.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

Thank you, the only thing is it doesnt come out even when i use a belt sander and I figured if it was a sticker then it would come off when sanding but not all wood is the same so maybe this one just penetrated deeper


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I'm going to agree with the concept of sticker stains and to boot it appears as if some spalting happened there also as a result of the stickers.

Sticker stains can be very deep all things considered...like an 1/8" deep which is a LOT of belt sanding. Cutting off the live edge should give you exact data on just how deep in your case.

Wow I didn’t know sticker stain would penetrate that deep, that makes sense why the sanding wasn’t really making any progress. I’ll cut it and look at how deep it is, then i’ll run it through the planer like you suggested. Thank you guys so much, i appreciate it


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Wet sticker staining.
Possibly stickered with old stickers with mold on them, outside in wet weather, mold got in and was encouraged by ongoing damp.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.