Well Fearn, if you're going to try this, I strongly suggest that you do it somewhere other than Indonesia.
Amongst the people who work with this wood there are two opinions as to the cause of the dark spots:- probably the greater number of people believe that at some time the tree has been damaged, perhaps by a cut, or something else that has caused a wound, and that before the injury has healed, water containing lime has entered the wound. The second group of people believe it is a sickness that can affect any number of trees and plants, nobody gets specific about what sort of sickness.
Many years ago I read an opinion somewhere that it was caused by fungus.
I'd never heard the term "spalting" before I read it here, so I've checked it out. From what I read, spalted wood seems to be quite a bit different to timoho with dark patches. I can recall several wrongkos I have worked on where the wood in the black patch was considerably harder than the surrounding wood, which is the opposite of what people tell us spalted wood is like.
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