Oooh, you have spalted maple!! So did my dad. He made some furniture out of the tree he'd cut down.
The Amana Colonies charges a king's ransom for furniture built from this intriguing wood, with the inky black squiggles that are actually damage to the tree -- "partly rotten and attacked by fungi," with "black lines that change unpredictably inside the wood."
We have some white pine filled with the squiggles of engravers, but no, we've never milled it. A derecho took down the towering pines we'd planted 20 years before, and we hauled away the carcasses of trees rather than do something with them (like buy our own mill).
The fir engraver causes significant mortality of mature and pole-size true fir trees, creating snags ranging in size from the largest host trees down to 10 cm (4 in) dbh. Colonized trees provide good woodpecker foraging habitat.
Only one white pine was decimated by the engraver. The six towering pines taken down by the derecho had appeared to be healthy. They just snapped in half like pencils. Of course I cannot find photos now...
I could swear I had blogged about this ...
AWESOME:
With the prices of lumber being off on the charts, thank goodness we are capable of producing our own lumber.