Have you ever considered making your own spalted maple (or oak, etc.) by using your myco skill to inoculate logs? I met someone who was doing that and he was able to either sell it or use it for his own projects and seemed to be making a modest but worthwhile side income from it.
And I see you have an old-school "radical harm" saw; I inherited the same model from my dad. I don't see those around much anymore (I don't have my dad's anymore, either but as consolation I still have both of my hands and all of my fingers).
I've been gathering branch and trunk sections over the years for my work, the latest being a perfectly good maple tree from next door that's waiting for the sawyer to collect and cut up for me. The older sections have been stacked beside my garage waiting to be sawn up. Last summer I had wood loving mushrooms take up residence on some of them so nature is helping me. The oldest is flame box elder with white oak added a couple years ago when the township cut down a massive white oak right across the street from my house. Another perfectly good tree cut down cause someone thought it was rotted. With the exception of the maple all had the fungi on them. Should be some good spalting going on with them.
I'm selling the radial saw as it always wanted to race into the cut so I got a sliding miter saw to replace it. Almost the same cross cut without that drawback.
Thanks to all for the likes and comments. This one was the most ambitious project to date. What you can't see in the pic is the front of the top has a very gentle curve to add a graceful line to it.
