Jeff,
Thanks for the info. Would you put me down for 15 bdft of 8/4 Soft Maple?
Thanks.
tv
IME, all the lumber from a sugar or black maple is considered "hard maple" - heartwood or sapwood. The heartwood is just undesirable due to the color.I've seen a lot of people get the two confused. Based on my understanding of maple lumber. Hard maple is the heart wood of a sugar maple tree, the sap wood of sugar maple is considered soft maple. It takes one huge sugar maple to get wide board hard maple because only the heart wood is considered hard maple. While soft maple includes the heart and sap of several different kinds of maple like red, silver, black maples or just the sap wood of sugar maple. This is the reason you mainly see hard maple in short narrow strips like on a bowling ally floor or laminated tops. While maple furniture tends to be soft maple because wider clearer boards are easier to come by. There are so many different kinds of maple trees out there it's real hard to determine what's what. Unless you got DaveO with you to identify them for you :-D
Thanks
IME, all the lumber from a sugar or black maple is considered "hard maple" - heartwood or sapwood. The heartwood is just undesirable due to the color.
Soft-maple is anything that isn't a hard maple.
I think you tend to see wider boards from soft maples because: i) they tend to have more sapwood (the desirable part) to heartwood as compared to the hard maples and ii) tend to be faster-growing/more plentiful.
Maple-strip anything is most likely IMO a result of the wood being relatively unstable (it moves) and industry's desire to keep costs low by optimizing yield. No need to use 20" curly boards if people are just going to drop bowling balls on them.
Is your soft maple clear - clear enough for full-size interior doors ?
-Mark
Spalted!? Did someone say spalted!? I hope your keeping some "scraps" for us turners :-D. I'll take three or four big bowl blanks and some pen blank stock please... :lol:. And what's all this about ambrosia...???
Sawed up the first maple log today - it is good and spalted and also has quite a bit of ambrosia markings. Don I think it'll make an pretty rocker once kiln dried. some of the boards are 16" wide and you should have a few to book match the seat.
Thanks
Ok, you talked me into it ;-). I'll take a nice spalted, curly, burly, wormy, ambrosia-y board :-D. I reckon in the 15 to 20 bf range oughta do it. That'll make plenty of nice pens and stoppers I hope . I might even do a platter if it's wide enough.
Thanks,
Bob