In the past, the color changes of wood, which were caused by fungi, were considered as wood defects, but today they are sometimes desired. The purpose of the research is to study the color change and weight loss of maple wood, which is caused by fungi infection. We used a combination of white rot and mold fungi. The smaller samples, which were made of field maple wood, had their color tone numerically determined with the CIELAB system, before and after a four and eight weeks of exposure. At the same time, bigger samples of wood were exposed to the same fungi combinations. Based on the results, we found out that color changes appear no matter what fungi we used. Mold fungi have drastically changes the color tone of the samples, while white rot fungi formed zone lines. The weight loss results showed good and bad sings. Mold fungi samples lost only a small portion of their weight, while on the other hand, the white rot fungi samples lost up to 20 % of their weight, Great weight loss means loss in mechanical properties and thereby fall in value. Larger samples showed optimistic results on their surface, but after removing the upper layer only minor color changes were present, which did not match our expectations. Based on these findings, we conclude that the larger samples would need more time to satisfy our expectations.
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