spalted maple body

[gibsonboy]

im thinking of making a complete body out of spalted maple, not just a top , the whole body.

anybody done this before? what kind of problems could expect?

[Mr Natural]

while I havent done a whole body out of spalted maple- there are some immediate concerns that come to my mind at least. You havent said what type of neck join you plan to use-(or how "spalty" your maple is)- but some immediate concerns are with the neck join. If you are doing a bolt on or glue in- is the area where neck and body join stable? even if you are going a neck thru- you can run into problems if you joint the edges and all of a sudden you hit a patch of spalt- "poof" like hitting a soft cork. there can be many surprises underneath the surface-you may have spalt where you intend to carve, where you put your pickup routes- but the neck join is the immediate concern in my mind. You will need to stabilize the wood as well- and you will want to make sure the material you stabilize with will not cause problems with your intended finish.

my out of box opinion is you are looking for trouble doing this- not saying you cant- but i have had what appeared to be perfectly solid, quarter sawn maple and I find out after carving a neck that there is a void/knot after I spent all that time prepping and carving etc and I had to scrap it. With spalt- you KNOW there are issues there to begin with- and you cant see what is under the surface of the wood. if the wood is only slightly spalted- you may not have an issue. If there is tons of spalt- I would not proceed with your plans. Either way- proceed with caution and dont be surprised if you do this that you may end up scraping the whole thing.

[gibsonboy]

This is why i ask first , do later, many thanks for your reply, i think i can put this out of my head now and go for a mahogany body with a cap of spalt. Thank heavens for the plethora of expert knowledge on this forum.